Corey W. Dyck, Falk Wunderlich - Kant and His German Contemporaries. Vol 1, Logic, Mind, Epistemology, Science and Ethics. 1

Introduction
Corey W. Dyck and Falk Wunderlich
I
Kant’s German contemporaries – those philosophers and intellectuals active
in the German-speaking lands of Europe throughout the eighteenth cen-
tury – participated in a formative but extraordinarily consequential period in
the history of German philosophy. Even limiting ourselves to the time
between the death of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and the publication of
Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, this period saw the clash between Christian
Wolff and the Pietists, which brought distinctively Modern philosophical
concerns such as the opposition of freedom and necessity, the limits of
reason, the challenge of Spinozism and the freedom to philosophize to the
forefront of the academic debate. It saw the first systematic treatment of
aesthetics by Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, and the first textbooks
devoted to anthropology and psychology published in any language. More-
over, it included multifaceted thinkers who made contributions of enduring
significance to a variety of fields, such as Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Moses
Mendelssohn and Johann Gottfried Herder. When we ‘fill out’ this picture
of German thought in the eighteenth century with figures as original and
widely influential as Johann Georg Sulzer, Johann Heinrich Lambert,
Johann Joachim Winckelmann, Hermann Samuel Reimarus and Johann
Georg Hamann, to name but a few, we begin to get a sense of its enormous
intellectual richness, vigour and importance.
Given this, it is hard to believe that Kant-scholars, particularly in the
Anglo-American tradition, have not always believed that an understanding

For ease of reference, in what follows we will designate these lands (particularly the various states,
territories and cities composing the Holy Roman Empire) merely as ‘Germany’. It should also be
noted that we number among Kant’s ‘German’ contemporaries thinkers who, even if they were not
native to Germany so understood, were nonetheless active in German philosophical circles. Nor
should the reference to a German ‘tradition’ in the eighteenth century be taken to imply that there is
a single, unified approach to, or doctrine regarding, philosophical issues among these figures, since,
as will become clear, this was certainly not the case.
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 Introduction
of these figures bears some relevance for our understanding of Kant’s
thought. This is due, in part, to the dismissive treatment of post-
Leibnizian German philosophy itself, an attitude that goes (at least) as
far back as G. W. F. Hegel. In his Lectures on the History of Philosophy,
for instance, Hegel mocks Wolff’s alleged syncretism of Leibnizian
principles with crude observation, which approach is baldly contrasted
with that of the ‘popular philosophers’ who are said to have elevated
‘natural feelings and sound human understanding’ into a philosophical
principle. Yet it is also the case that some of these figures were lost in the
long shadow cast by Kant’s Critical philosophy, which, after all, inaugur-
ated the period of ‘classical German philosophy’, a phrase that appears
to banish the antecedent tradition into a sort of pre-historical status.
Indeed, a number of otherwise dynamic thinkers from this period, includ-
ing Johann August Eberhard, Johann Christian Lossius, Ernst Platner,
Johann Georg Heinrich Feder and Christoph Meiners, seem to have paid
a high historical price for their outspoken opposition to Kant. Yet it
was not only insofar as this tradition and its representatives were
directly displaced by the extraordinary success of Kant’s thought that their
historical significance was obscured, but also indirectly, insofar as the
Kantian philosophy (and its adherents) exerted an influence upon the
historiography of Modern philosophy itself. The work of thinkers such
as Lambert and Johann Nikolaus Tetens, which conscientiously sought to
incorporate British-influenced observational and experimental
approaches within German rationalistic metaphysics and epistemology,
did not fit neatly into the narrative advanced by Kantian historians in
particular, which divided the pre-Kantian philosophical debate into war-
ring rationalist and empiricist camps, the better to retrospectively prepare
the way for Kant’s own novel synthesis. As a result, the contributions

Lectures on the History of Philosophy (–) vol. III, pp. –.

This is particularly evident in historical treatments by Neo-Kantians; thus Erdmann writes against the
Göttingen critics of Kant: ‘The abuse which Meiners, a naïve poly-historian through and through,
eventually ventures against Kant in the introduction to his Psychology, is downright and excessively
crude and foolish’ (Erdmann, Kant’s Kriticismus, p. , referring to the introduction to Meiners’
Grundriß der Seelenlehre), and he likewise charges Eberhard, Lossius and Platner with ‘incredible
naïvity’ (p. f). One might also compare Karl Vorländer’s judgement that ‘the school-philosophers
Feder and Meiners were incapable of grasping the depth of the new philosophy’ (Immanuel Kant,
vol. , pp. –). It bears noting that, for his part, Erdmann, in his Martin Knutzen und seine Zeit,
lamented the dearth of historical work on Kant’s philosophy that goes beyond an analysis of the pre-
Critical writings, with the discussion of Knutzen in that work constituting a landmark contribution in
this respect.

This is a theme of, for instance, recent work by Alberto Vanzo; see ‘Kant on Empiricism and
Rationalism’ and ‘Empiricism and Rationalism in Nineteenth-Century Histories of Philosophy’.
Corey W. Dyck and Falk Wunderlich 
by these figures towards the development of German philosophy in
this period, and even their anticipations of Kant’s ‘revolutionary’ project,
were frequently dismissed as unsophisticated, unsystematic and mere
‘eclecticism’.
These historical and philosophical factors, as well as other, more mun-
dane obstacles (including linguistic considerations, but also the limited
availability of the texts themselves in a pre-digital era), meant that Anglo-
American Kant-scholars frequently attempted to make sense of Kant’s
philosophical contributions without the benefit of the thinkers and debates
that provided the conditions for its development and (particularly in the
case of his German-language works) its primary audience. Such a decon-
textualization, though radical, was nonetheless thought to find a founda-
tion of sorts in Kant’s own conception of his mature project. So, while it
may have been conceded that Kant’s pre-Critical works betrayed the
peculiar interests and engaged in the esoteric debates that preoccupied
German academics while he laboured under their shared dogmatist yoke,
the works of the Critical period are to be distinguished by Kant’s conscien-
tious casting-off of the burden of dogmatic thinking and the adoption of
a radically new perspective from which he could offer novel solutions
to the enduring problems of philosophy. With this in mind, that Kant
should be taken to address the minores among his predecessors would be
beneath the dignity of his monumental philosophical achievement.
Indeed, the thinkers of the Leibnizian-Wolffian tradition have borne much
of the brunt of this attitude, as is perhaps most evident in Jonathan
Bennett’s characterization of Wolff as ‘a second-rate mind’ who is regret-
tably ‘interposed, as a distorting glass or a muffling pillow, between the
two great geniuses of German philosophy’, and for the sake of a more
philosophically interesting comparison with Leibniz (and others) he pro-
poses to ‘ignore Wolff and write as though Kant’s only Leibnizian source
were Leibniz’. Of course, one does not need to think that Wolff or any of

See, for instance, Kuno Fischer’s Immanuel Kant und seine Lehre, where Wolff is labelled an eclectic for
making Leibniz’s principles conformable to experience (pp. ff), and where this inspires subsequent
German thinkers, such as Lambert and Tetens, ‘who are openly eclectic in their attempt to combine
German metaphysics with English empiricism, Leibniz with Newton and Locke, and Wolff with the
English deists and moral philosophers and with Shaftesbury and Rousseau’ (p. ). Hans Vaihinger
argues even more forcefully along these lines, as he claims that the second half of the eighteenth century
saw misleading ‘compromises’ between rationalism and empiricism, which Vaihinger deems
philosophically untenable. Disgusted by this eclecticism, Kant apparently returned to Leibniz and
Hume, according to Vaihinger, and ‘ignored his irresolute [halbschlächtigen] contemporaries’
(Vaihinger, Commentar zu Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft, vol. , p. ).

The quote is from Bennett, Kant’s Dialectic, p. . Bennett, of course, is by no means alone in thus
rejecting the philosophical or historical relevance of the eighteenth-century context; see, for instance,
 Introduction
Kant’s contemporaries were ‘first-rate’ minds in order to accept that they
are important for understanding Kant’s views, much less for an adequate
appraisal of Kant’s relation to Leibniz. The worry might, in any case, have
been (and likely continues to be for some) that the few and, at best, modest
dividends yielded would hardly justify the time spent mastering the often
obscure and frequently voluminous works of Kant’s contemporaries.
Recent decades, however, have seen a rapid increase in the publication
of English-language studies that show this concern to be thoroughly
misplaced. Of course, any attempt to understand Kant within his proxim-
ate intellectual context owes, at the very least, a spiritual debt to Lewis
White Beck’s masterly Early German Philosophy: Kant and His Predecessors
(), which thoroughly situated Kant’s philosophy within the entire
compass of pre- and early Modern German thought. Its undeniable
importance notwithstanding, Beck’s vision of German philosophy, par-
ticularly in the eighteenth century, as developing in a gradual teleological
arc towards Kant’s thought, where Kant discerned clearly and distinctly
that which was grasped only obscurely or confusedly by his predecessors,
ultimately meant that it served as a jumping-off point (albeit an indispens-
able one) for subsequent studies that sought to investigate Kant’s engage-
ment with his contemporaries with a more charitable eye. Following Beck,
Manfred Kuehn’s Scottish Common Sense in Germany, – ()
not only made the case for Kant’s thorough engagement with Scottish
critics of Hume, but also drew new attention to the complexity and
distinctiveness of the German intellectual context in the second half of
the eighteenth century. In his subsequent Kant: A Biography (),
Kuehn likewise explored the distinctive intellectual context of Königsberg
in an effort to determine the extent to which the various traditions
represented there – particularly Wolffianism, Pietism and Aristotelianism –
impacted his thinking.
With the case for the general importance of contemporary German
thought for understanding Kant having been made, the door was opened
for more focused examinations of the relevance of these thinkers to specific
topics in Kant’s philosophy. After the publication of important studies that
acknowledged the utility of this tradition for understanding the major
W. H. Walsh, who likewise dismisses Wolff and Baumgarten as ‘second-rate thinkers’ (Kant’s
Criticism of Metaphysics, p. ). Nor is this attitude absent from the most recent secondary
literature on Kant, as is evidenced in Waxman’s Kant’s Anatomy of the Intelligent Mind (see
pp. –), and it (or an even more radical version thereof) arguably finds a new basis in Graham
Bird’s rejection of ‘traditionalist’, as opposed to ‘revolutionary’, readings of Kant (see the
introduction to his The Revolutionary Kant).
Corey W. Dyck and Falk Wunderlich 
arguments of Kant’s first Critique, the first decade and a half of this
millennium has seen the publication of a number of English-language
monographs that have explored Kant’s engagement with the German
tradition with respect to his pre-Critical works, his anthropology, his
metaphysics of causation, his account of the cognitive subject, his philoso-
phy of biology and his criticism of rational psychology, as well as an
English translation of a number of key works from this tradition.
This late boom in scholarship serves as a welcome supplement to the
substantial German-language scholarship in this area, which has likewise
seen renewed interest, particularly from the second half of the last century
onward, and to these can be added a number of recent studies (in a variety
of languages) that have considered aspects of this tradition without an
exclusive (or even primary) focus on its relevance for Kant’s thought.
The present volume represents an attempt to advance and extend the
interest in Kant’s various intellectual relationships with his contemporar-
ies. For the sake of the detailed discussions to follow, it will be useful to
introduce these figures (though a number have been mentioned already)

In particular, Hatfield’s The Natural and the Normative (); Friedman’s Kant and the Exact
Sciences (); Laywine, Kant’s Early Metaphysics (); Tonelli’s Kant’s ‘Critique of Pure Reason’
within the Tradition of Modern Logic (); and Longuenesse’s Kant and the Capacity to Judge
() (a translation of her Kant et le pouvoir de juger []).

In order: Schönfeld, The Philosophy of the Young Kant (); Zammito, Kant, Herder, and the Birth
of Anthropology (); Watkins, Kant and the Metaphysics of Causality (); Kitcher, Kant’s
Thinker (); Mensch, Kant’s Organicism: Epigenesis and the Development of Critical Philosophy
(); Dyck, Kant and Rational Psychology (); and Watkins, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason:
Background Source Materials ().

Here, of course, one might cite Ernst Cassirer’s Das Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophie, vol. 
() and Max Wundt’s Die deutsche Schulphilosophie im Zeitalter der Aufklärung (). Among
the texts from the latter half of the last century that might be listed here are the numerous
contributions of Giorgio Tonelli (including ‘Elementi metodologici e metafisici in Kant’ [],
‘Der Streit über die mathematische Methode’ [] and ‘Der historische Ursprung der kantischen
Termini “Analytik” und “Dialektik”’ []); Norbert Hinske (e.g., Ich handle mit Vernunft. Moses
Mendelssohn und die europäische Aufklärung, ed. Hinske [], Kant und die Aufklärung, ed.
Hinske [], Kant und sein Jahrhundert, eds. Hinske and Cesa []); Wolfgang Carl’s Der
schweigende Kant (); Klemme’s Kants Philosophie des Subjekts (); Schwaiger’s Kategorische
und andere Imperative (); Heßbrüggen-Walter’s Die Seele und ihre Vermögen ();
Wunderlich’s Kant und die Bewußtseinstheorien des . Jahrhunderts (); and Sturm’s Kant und
die Wissenschaften vom Menschen ().

Among the most recent are: Beiser, Diotima’s Children: German Aesthetic Rationalism from Leibniz
to Lessing (); Thiel, The Early Modern Subject (); Buchenau, The Founding of Aesthetics in
the German Enlightenment (); Guyer, A History of Modern Aesthetics, Volume I: The Eighteenth
Century (); Rumore, Materia cogitans. L’Aufklärung di fronte al materialismo (); and the
forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Eighteenth Century German Philosophy, eds. Beiser and Look.
A couple of reference works devoted to this period have also recently been published: The
Bloomsbury Dictionary of Eighteenth Century German Philosophers, ed. Kuehn and Klemme (new
edition, ); and Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie. Die Philosophie des . Jahrhunderts,
vol. , eds. Holzhey and Mudroch ().
 Introduction
and to briefly account for their connection, direct or otherwise, with
Kant’s thought. To this end, we might distinguish, broadly, between three
groups of contemporaries in terms of their relation to Kant: () those who
supplied the antecedent background to his thought and its early develop-
ment (i.e., his immediate predecessors); () those scholars and academics
with whom Kant directly interacted, particularly in his Critical period and,
in a number of cases, regarded as the natural audience of his publications
(i.e., his peers); and () those who, either as actual students or merely as
intellectual heirs, adopted Kant’s thought and undertook to transmit but
also to transform it (i.e., his earliest successors).
In the first group, Kant’s predecessors, belong those German thinkers
who contributed to shaping the intellectual context that framed Kant’s
philosophical (and religious) education and his early publications. Fore-
most among these is Christian Wolff (–), the founder of a
philosophical system based on broadly Leibnizian foundations, which
dominated German intellectual life for the first half of the eighteenth
century. While Kant appreciated the spirit of rigour and systematicity that
Wolff introduced into German philosophy, and offered praise for his
general logic and his project of a universal practical philosophy, he was
also clear on the defects of the Wolffian philosophy, which frequently
served as a foil for the development of his own views. Wolff’s primary
intellectual (and indeed political) opposition was supplied by Pietism, a
theological movement that gained considerable influence in Prussia, the
members of which saw to Wolff’s exile in  (though he would return in
 at the invitation of Frederick II). While the original Halle Pietists
were not primarily philosophers, and the relevance of the movement for
the development of Kant’s thought (as he was educated in a Pietist insti-
tution) has been disputed, a number of later thinkers of distinction and
importance for Kant were connected with their movement. Among these
are: Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (–), a Leibnizian thinker and
founder of the discipline of aesthetics, whose texts formed the basis for
Kant’s lectures in metaphysics and ethics and who was himself educated in
the famous Pietist orphanage in Halle; Christian August Crusius
(–), an important influence upon Kant (and his occasional target),
who incorporated a number of core Pietistic concerns in a sophisticated

For these claims, see Bxxxvi and LV, :, respectively.

For an account, see Beck, Early German Philosophy, pp. –, though a rather more detailed
account is provided by Zeller, ‘Wolffs Vertreibung aus Halle’.

See, in particular, Kuehn, Kant, pp. –, especially pp. –.
Corey W. Dyck and Falk Wunderlich 
way into his philosophical system; and Martin Knutzen (–), a well-
known professor (and one of Kant’s teachers) at the University of
Königsberg, who wove Pietistic commitments into a broader Wolffian
metaphysical framework.
The second and undoubtedly most populous group, that of Kant’s
peers, consists in those of his contemporaries with whom he either had
direct contact (in person or through correspondence) or whose work and
reputation Kant was familiar with, such that they likely constitute part of
the intended audience for his philosophical works. Kant’s engagement
with the members of this group takes various forms. In some, and indeed
the most important cases, they exert a direct and positive influence on his
thinking. Particularly significant here are: Johann Heinrich Lambert
(–), a polymath and author of two influential philosophical works,
with whom Kant corresponded on topics of central importance for his
developing thought (and to whom it appears Kant had originally intended
to dedicate the first Critique); Moses Mendelssohn (–), the
leading figure of the Jewish Enlightenment and author of (among other
texts) highly influential treatments of metaphysics, aesthetics and political
philosophy; and Johann Nikolaus Tetens (–), whose principal
philosophical work (Philosophische Versuche über die menschliche Natur und
ihre Entwicklung []) reportedly lay open on Kant’s desk as he laboured
on the first Critique.
Others among Kant’s peers may not have exerted such a profound
influence on his mature philosophical work, but Kant was certainly
aware of their contributions in specific areas, and his own philosophical
positions frequently relate and respond to theirs in various ways. Among
the many that might be mentioned here, we might note: Leonhard Euler
(–), the famous Swiss mathematician, a high-profile member of the
Prussian Royal Academy of Sciences and a leading critic of the Leibnizian-
Wolffian philosophy; Georg Friedrich Meier (–), a loyal expositor
of Baumgarten’s philosophy and an original thinker in his own right,
whose logic textbook Kant used (thoroughly, by one account); Johann
Friedrich Blumenbach (–), an anthropologist and generation
theorist whose work informed Kant’s aims in the third Critique; and

For the draft dedication to Lambert, see R  (:).

This report is contained in Hamann’s letter to Herder from  May  (see Johann Georg
Hamann, Briefwechsel, vol. , p. ).

See the passage related in Kuehn, Kant, p. .

Kant admits this in his letter to Blumenbach of  August  (Corr, :–), though for
discussion of its significance, see Mensch’s contribution to this volume.
 Introduction
Ernst Platner (–), a ‘philosophical doctor’ and author of one of
the first textbooks in anthropology. Lastly within this group of peers are to
be numbered Kant’s earliest critics, among the most active of whom were:
Johann Georg Hamann (–), a part of Kant’s social circle in Königs-
berg and a highly original if abstruse thinker in his own right, and author
of the first ‘metacritique’ of Kant’s Critical philosophy; Christian Garve
(–) a philosopher and translator held in high regard by many,
including Kant himself, who, along with the eclectic philosopher Johann
Georg Heinrich Feder (–), authored the first (and since notori-
ous) review of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason; and Johann August Eberhard
(–), an ardent defender of Leibniz and one of Kant’s most active
critics, and among the few to whom Kant offered a detailed (if polemical)
response.
The final group of Kant’s contemporaries to be considered are his early
successors, a group that includes his own students and disciples as well as
his closest intellectual heirs. Among the former belong Marcus Herz
(–), Kant’s student, chosen respondent to his Inaugural
Dissertation, and a sounding-board throughout his philosophical career,
who published a number of philosophical works, including an important
exposition of Kant’s Dissertation; as well as the thinker who was undoubt-
edly Kant’s most famous student, Johann Gottfried Herder (–),
who made signal contributions to aesthetics, philosophy of language and
history, and who, despite (or maybe because of) his remaining a devotee of
Kant’s pre-Critical thought, was an important opponent of the Critical
philosophy. Among those successors who did not study directly under
Kant are some of the most important figures in post-Kantian German
philosophy. These include Karl Leonhard Reinhold (–), who
made important early contributions to the Critical philosophy and held
the first chair in Kantian philosophy, but who came to view that project as
radically incomplete; Salomon Maimon (–), a Lithuanian Jew
who was unable to attend Kant’s lectures but whose subtle criticism of

See the letter to Herz of  November  (Corr, :) and the letter to Garve of  August
: ‘Garve, Mendelssohn and Tetens are the only men I know through whose cooperation this
subject could have been brought to a successful conclusion before too long, even though centuries
before this one has not seen it done’ (Corr, :).

It should be noted that while ‘eclecticism’ was employed as a derogatory term by Neo-Kantians and
later historians, there were of course thinkers who used it in a positive sense, as Feder does when, for
instance, he refers to his ‘irenic-eclectic method of teaching [irenisch-eclectische Lehrart]’ (see J. G. H.
Feder’s Leben, Natur und Grundsätze, p. ). On this one might also consult Zimmerli, ‘Schwere
Rüstung’, pp. –; Albrecht, Eklektik; as well as Bacin’s contribution to this volume.
Corey W. Dyck and Falk Wunderlich 
transcendental philosophy earned Kant’s admiration, and who developed
an original, sceptical philosophical perspective in subsequent works; and
finally, Johann Gottlieb Fichte (–), one of the major figures in
post-Kantian idealism, whose first book was published anonymously with
Kant’s assistance (and with Kant himself mistaken by many as the author).
These, then, are many of the primary figures who formed Kant’s intellec-
tual atmosphere, and whose distinguished and often foundational contri-
butions to all areas of philosophical interest ensured that, far from being
isolated from the wider intellectual world through his immersion in this
context, Kant was rather offered a window on, and a platform for engaging
with, some of the most important developments in a variety of areas of
philosophical inquiry in the eighteenth century.
II
This volume has a number of aims, the foremost among which is to build
on and significantly extend the recent research mentioned in the preceding
section in documenting how tightly intertwined Kant’s philosophy is with
the philosophical efforts of his eighteenth-century contemporaries. Since
no single volume, or even pair of volumes, could claim to cover the
unsurpassed scope of Kant’s Critical philosophy, or indeed do justice to
the richness of German thought in this period, the contributions to this
volume will focus on a handful of topics in Kant’s theoretical and practical
philosophy, including issues in logic, metaphysics, epistemology, the his-
tory and philosophy of science, and ethics and moral psychology. In this
way, we hope to supplement the existing literature on the relationship of
Kant’s thought to the recognized major figures of early modern philoso-
phy, which includes two recently published volumes devoted to this
topic. Given this, it is decidedly not our intention to argue for the
displacement of all but the German context when considering the devel-
opment, reception, interpretation or evaluation of Kant’s thought, but
merely to begin to fill out a large and largely missing part of the existing
picture. In addition, it is also an important aim of the volume to reflect the
international character of the scholarship on, and interest in, this topic. For
this reason, nearly half of the contributions are from scholars based outside
of North America and the United Kingdom, with the intention that the

This is evident, for instance, in Kant’s letter to Herz of  May ; see especially Corr, :–.

Kant and the Early Moderns, eds. Garber and Longuenesse (); The Cambridge Companion to
Kant and Modern Philosophy, ed. Guyer ().
 Introduction
present volume should bring deserved attention to the work of a number
of Kant scholars and scholars of the German Enlightenment who do not
publish primarily in English.
Each of the following chapters serves to cast light on aspects of Kant’s
complex relationship with his German contemporaries. Beginning with
the first two chapters, which concern the topic of logic, the authors
consider Kant’s historically less well-received contributions to modern
logic, namely his foundation of a transcendental logic and his dismissal
of mathematical methods from general logic, and both contend that key
misapprehensions concerning each can be addressed by locating his dis-
cussions in a more appropriate context. In Chapter , Brian A. Chance
argues for an important, if largely overlooked, role for Wolff’s empirical
psychology in Kant’s organization of the topics of transcendental logic.
In particular, he contends that Kant makes use of a Wolffian conception of
purity that is to be distinguished from its better-known connection
to apriority in structuring the key divisions in his transcendental logic.
In Chapter , Huaping Lu-Adler situates Kant’s use of circle notation, a
usage he likely borrows from Euler, within the context of the active
eighteenth-century debate regarding Leibniz’s ambitious project of
framing a logical calculus. Yet, as she argues, Kant’s use of the circle
notation departs from the proof-theoretic use that Euler puts it to; rather,
for Kant, this notation is employed simply to display the logical form of
concepts, the extensions of which are taken to contain objects in general,
and where this departure from Euler offers a more satisfying philosophical
explanation of the diminished utility of this notation for Kant’s
mathematics and logic.
Turning to Kant’s relationship to his peers and successors on traditional
metaphysical issues in Part II, the three chapters show that in spite of some
crucial differences, there are nonetheless important continuities between
Kant and his contemporaries concerning the account of the knowledge of
the self and its unity, the nature of our confidence in the soul’s immortality
and the division of the faculties. In Chapter , Udo Thiel offers a
comparison of Tetens’s views on the self and its unity with those of Kant.
According to Thiel, Tetens attempts to blend broadly ‘rationalist’ and
‘empiricist’ approaches in maintaining our knowledge of the self’s unity,
and while Tetens deploys various notions of and arguments for the unity
of the self that find analogues in Kant’s later treatment, Thiel notes that an
important difference between the two remains inasmuch as Tetens infers
from the (merely logical) unity of the self to the substantiality of the soul.
In Chapter , Corey W. Dyck argues that while Meier is commonly
Corey W. Dyck and Falk Wunderlich 
acknowledged to be important for an understanding of Kant’s logic,
Meier’s writings on rational psychology are also worthy of consideration,
especially inasmuch as they foreshadow Kant’s own Critical position
concerning the soul. So, Meier is likewise critical of attempts to demon-
strate the soul’s immortality, but he nonetheless defends what arguably
amounts to a Kantian moral belief in immortality inasmuch as he thinks
that our assent in this case is warranted primarily on the grounds of its
importance for morality as such. In Chapter , Brandon C. Look turns to
one of Kant’s most important successors, Salomon Maimon, and his
efforts to defend dogmatic metaphysics in the wake of Kant’s criticism.
As Look documents, Maimon draws upon Leibnizian metaphysical and
epistemological doctrines in his critique of Kant, particularly in raising
objections to the core Kantian distinction between sensibility and under-
standing, which criticism arguably leads Kant to a new appreciation of the
resources of the Leibnizian account of the cognitive faculties and to a
reconsideration of his diagnosis of the foundational error underlying
Leibniz’s metaphysics.
The next set of chapters turns to classical epistemological issues, as the
authors make the case that some of the key details of Kant’s position on
truth and of his refutation of external world scepticism are better under-
stood in direct connection with influential treatments on the part of his
peers. In Chapter , Thomas Sturm considers how contextualizing Kant’s
various discussions of truth with respect to Lambert’s offers a compelling
alternative to recent interpretations of Kant’s account of truth while
showing how it gives a clear and distinctive direction to the first-
Critique’s Transcendental Analytic, understood as a ‘logic of truth’. Sturm
contends that for Kant, as for Lambert, and unlike, for instance, Putnam’s
Kant, an account of truth is conceptually independent of, and prior to, the
account of knowledge or, indeed, any claims regarding the distinction
between appearances and things-in-themselves (which is where commen-
tators typically first turn in framing Kant’s account). In Chapter , Paul
Guyer makes the case for the later importance of Mendelssohn for Kant’s
thought, particularly with respect to the Refutation of Idealism in the
B edition of the first Critique. As Guyer argues, Kant’s Refutation bears a
striking resemblance to Mendelssohn’s own in the Morgenstunden,
although Kant departs from Mendelssohn in rejecting his modesty
regarding what can be known concerning things in themselves, and in
making the case for our knowledge of the existence of things independent
of our representations of them. Continuing in this epistemological vein,
Falk Wunderlich in Chapter  turns to the charge on the part of Platner
 Introduction
that Kant’s Critical philosophy amounts to a form of scepticism.
Wunderlich accordingly documents Platner’s evolving criticisms of the
Critical philosophy as, by turns, endorsing scepticism and dogmatism, all
the while attempting to integrate and augment aspects of Kant’s thought
within his own philosophical perspective. In addition, Platner’s engage-
ment with Kant’s first Critique illustrates some of the challenges and
complications attending the reception of that text among independent
late-Enlightenment thinkers in Germany.
The two chapters of Part IV document the importance of the contem-
porary theory and practice of science as informing not only Kant’s aim in
his Critical project, but also his later efforts to shape its reception and
influence by active scientists. In Chapter , Eric Watkins explicates Lam-
bert’s conception of cognition and science in an effort to disclose the
fundamental continuities between his project and that of the first Critique.
Without taking away from the unquestioned originality of the latter,
Watkins spies an important precedent for Kant’s efforts in Lambert’s
emphasis on the importance of a priori cognition as a foundation
of science, where this cognition is understood in the familiar Kantian
(i.e., non-metaphysical) sense. In Chapter , Jennifer Mensch contends
that, Kant’s endorsement of Blumenbach’s views on the ‘formative force
[Bildungstrieb]’ in the third Critique notwithstanding, Blumenbach actu-
ally exerted less influence on Kant’s views on generation and race than is
widely suspected. Through detailed consideration of Kant’s views on these
topics as expressed in his reviews of Herder’s Ideas, Mensch argues that
Kant’s approving remarks had a more strategic intention, namely to secure
the support of a rising scientific star while gently correcting his views to
better accord with Kant’s own.
In Part V, issues relating to practical philosophy are the focus, as each of
the chapters documents how key aspects of Kant’s mature ethical thought –
his doctrine of the postulate of immortality, his rejection of empirical
approaches to morality and his deduction of the idea of freedom – can be
understood as drawing on or responding to the discussions on the part of
his contemporaries. Returning to the topic of immortality in Chapter ,
Paola Rumore turns to examining an important but overlooked aspect
of Crusius’s influence on Kant, namely his deployment of ‘moral proofs’ of
immortality. As Rumore shows, Crusius (like Meier) sought an alternative
to what he regarded as the defective Wolffian theoretical demonstrations of
the soul’s survival of the body’s death through the moral properties of
rational spirits (such as their conscience) as well as through the necessity
of eternal reward and punishment for moral action, though Crusius
Corey W. Dyck and Falk Wunderlich 
likewise stressed, in a clear anticipation of Kant, that the resulting
confidence in immortality does not replace but only complements the
power of the moral law to motivate our actions. Stefano Bacin makes the
case, in Chapter , that Feder’s moral philosophy, developed in a series of
publications that coincides with Kant’s major moral writings, not only
constituted an important counterpoint to Kant’s own, but also presented a
likely target for a number of Kant’s criticisms. So, Feder’s revival of
Wolff’s project of a universal practical philosophy, though with a decidedly
empirical slant, as well as his conception of will and happiness and his faith
in common-sense morality, offered an influential empirical alternative to
the Critical ethics with which Kant engages at numerous junctures.
Finally, in Chapter , Heiner F. Klemme argues that Christian Garve’s
doubts regarding any theoretical resolution of the antithesis between
freedom and necessity informs Kant’s argumentation late in the Ground-
work. While Garve does not think that a failure to refute the fatalist
undermines our moral practice, which is grounded on feeling, Kant
recognizes that Garve’s well-intentioned scepticism risks playing into the
fatalist’s hands, and so offers a defence of the possibility of freedom
(as compatible with natural causation through transcendental idealism)
and a further, practical deduction such that we are justified in acting in
accordance with the idea of freedom, given that freedom’s impossibility
cannot be shown.
In the end, the portrait of Kant that will emerge from following chapters
is of a major thinker thoroughly engaged with his contemporaries –
drawing on their ideas and the ways they approached philosophical
inquiry, targeting their arguments for criticism and responding to their
concerns, and seeking to secure the legacy of his thought among them. Yet,
in any project of this sort there are bound to be omissions, some that are
readily understandable and others that require justification. Concerning
the latter, among the most obvious omissions are chapters dealing (exclu-
sively) with Kant’s relations to Baumgarten, Knutzen, Hamann and
Herder; however, Kant’s relation to Baumgarten will be the exclusive topic
of another forthcoming volume, Knutzen’s importance for Kant has
already been explored in a number of English-language publications,
and Hamann’s and Herder’s principal philosophical contributions do not

Baumgarten and Kant on Metaphysics, eds. Fugate and Hymers (forthcoming).

For discussions of Knutzen’s importance for Kant in general, see Kuehn, Kant, pp. –; and for
his influence on Kant on specific topics, consult Watkins (Kant and the Metaphysics, pp. – and
–) and Dyck (Kant and Rational Psychology, pp. – and –).
 Introduction
lie within the areas of focus for the present volume (and indeed theirs and
others’ will be taken up in a number of chapters in its successor).
There are others, of course, who would have benefitted from coverage
here: among those mentioned above, H. S. Reimarus and Lessing are
perhaps the most deserving, though at least concerning the latter there is
a substantial body of philosophical literature already available in English.
An obvious omission that is much more difficult to justify, though hardly
difficult to explain, is the absence of any consideration of Kant’s relation to
his female contemporaries. Among the many women who contributed
to German intellectual life in the eighteenth century, there are lament-
ably few with whom Kant engaged intellectually, and among these there
are even fewer for whom there is a written record. Kant’s well-known
correspondence with Maria von Herbert (–) constitutes an
important, if not a wholly edifying, exception, and this exchange has been
the exclusive focus of some recent discussion. In this respect particularly,
it is hoped that the contributions in this volume will provide a needed
foundation and otherwise-lacking encouragement for scholars to extend
this research further into the many neglected figures among Kant’s
German contemporaries, even – and especially – into those figures whose
philosophical and historical importance might in no way be a function of
their engagement with its most influential thinker.

To name only a few: Allison’s Lessing and the Enlightenment (), Beiser’s Diotima’s Children
() and the recent biography by Nisbet, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing ().

Among those who were active in philosophical circles who might be mentioned here are Henriette
Herz (–), Elise Reimarus (–) and Johanna Charlotte Unzer (–).

See Langton’s critical assessment of the exchange in her ‘Duty and Desolation’, as well as the later
response by Mahon, ‘Kant and Maria von Herbert’.
 
Wolff’s Empirical Psychology and the Structure

of the Transcendental Logic
Brian A. Chance
While there is a broad consensus that Kant models the structure of the
Critique of Pure Reason on aspects of Wolff’s system of philosophy, scholars
have taken different views on the significance of this fact. When Erich
Adickes comments on Kant’s ability to “fill old bottles with new wine,”
for example, he means to fault Kant for presenting his arguments in a form
that is singularly unhelpful for understanding their content. Adickes’s
attitude toward the structure of the Critique echoes Schopenhauer’s deri-
sion decades earlier of Kant’s obsession with “systematicity” and has been
echoed in the many decades since by scholars on both sides of the
Atlantic. Others, most notably Giorgio Tonelli, have argued that one
cannot approach the content of the Critique without first understanding its
form, and that this form is borrowed largely from the conceptual and
structural conventions common to the logic books of Kant’s contemporar-
ies, a tradition that bears the stamp of Wolff’s influence more than that of
any other thinker.
With respect to the Transcendental Logic, the standard reading, drawn
from Tonelli and endorsed prominently by Paul Guyer and Allen Wood, is
that this portion of the Critique “replicates the traditional division of logic
textbooks into three sections on concepts, judgments, and inferences.” More
specifically, the first and second books of the Transcendental Analytic
(the Analytic of Concepts and the Analytic of Principles) are thought
to provide the analogue in transcendental logic to traditional accounts of

Adickes, Kant’s Systematik als systembildender Factor, p. .

See Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, vol. , pp. –, –, , –, ,
, , and ; R. P. Wolff, Kant’s Theory of Mental Activity, pp. f. and –; Guyer, Kant and
the Claims of Knowledge, p. n; and Dicker, Kant’s Theory of Knowledge, pp. f.

See, especially, Tonelli’s posthumous Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason” within the tradition of modern
logic.

“Introduction” in Critique of Pure Reason, ed. and trans. P. Guyer and A. Wood, pp.  and . See
also Guyer’s introduction to Guyer (ed.), Cambridge Companion to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason,
pp. –; Brandt, Die Urteilstafel, p. ; and Conrad, Kants Logikvorlesungen, pp.  and –.

 Wolff’s Empirical Psychology & Transcendental Logic
concept formation and judgments, respectively, while the second book of
the Transcendental Dialectic (the Dialectical Inferences of Pure Reason) is
thought to provide the analogue in transcendental logic to traditional
accounts of inference.
While it is undeniable that these parts of the Transcendental Logic
contain elements that are similar to the accounts of concept formation,
judgment, and inference one finds in the logic books of the Wolffian
tradition, it seems to me that these similarities are largely incidental to its
structure. One reason to think this is that the basic structure of this part of
the Critique is not governed by the single tripartite division these scholars
reference, but by two bipartite divisions: the analytic-dialectic and the
“two books and their various chapters and sections” that Kant includes as
the only subheadings to the Analytic and Dialectic in the original table of
contents of the Critique (Axxiii). Were the tripartite division significant to
the structure of the Transcendental Logic, one would expect Kant’s
presentation of this structure in the table of contents to reflect it. That it
does not gives us reason to look for an alternative account. Moreover,
given that Wolff does not draw a distinction in kind between what Kant
refers to as intuitions, concepts, and ideas, there is as much similarity
between the accounts of pure space and time and the ideas of reason in the
Aesthetic and Dialectic and the traditional accounts of concept formation
as there is between these accounts and the Analytic of Concepts. So one
might wonder why the standard reading regards the last similarity as more
significant than the first two.
My goal in this essay is not to directly address concerns that might
be raised about the standard reading, however, but to present an alternative
and, I believe, more plausible account of Wolff’s influence on the structure
of the Transcendental Logic, one that focuses more on aspects of his
empirical psychology than his logic. In particular, I will argue that the
division of the Analytic and Dialectic into “two books and their various
chapters and sections” is deeply indebted to a conception of purity that
Wolff introduces in his empirical psychology, and that this conception
sheds more light on the overall structure of the Transcendental Logic than
the distinctions Tonelli, Guyer, and Wood emphasize. In section ,
I outline two conceptions of purity found in Kant and trace them to

While almost everything that is true of the discipline of transcendental logic is also true of the
portion of the Critique bearing that name, I will for the sake of clarity use “transcendental logic” to
denote the former and “Transcendental Logic” to denote the latter.

This is in contrast to modern editions, which typically list all the books, chapters, and subheadings
for the various parts of the Critique.
Brian A. Chance 
similar views in Wolff. In section , I turn to Kant’s views about logic
as they are expressed in the Critique and argue that it is best to interpret
his taxonomy of logic on its own terms rather than reading it through its
terminological similarities to aspects of the Wolffian tradition. In section ,
I argue that the second of the two conceptions of purity identified in
section  – which, as I will argue in that section, is central to Kant’s
conception of the pure intuitions of space and time, the categories,
and the ideas of reason – is also central to his conception of the structure
of the Transcendental Logic. In doing so, I argue against the widespread
view that this section of the Critique is modeled solely on what Kant calls
pure general logic. I then conclude by briefly reviewing my account
and considering some of its broader implications for our understanding
of Kant.
. Two Conceptions of Purity in Kant and Wolff

The most straightforward meaning Kant assigns to “pure” in the first
Critique is associated with a priori cognition. In the B Preface, he glosses
the “pure part” of a science as “the part in which reason determines
its object wholly a priori” (Bx). In this context, the pure part of a science
is its a priori part, while the impure part is its a posteriori or empirical part.
Similarly, in a passage common to both the A and B Introductions, he
writes that “pure reason” is the aspect of reason that “contains the prin-
ciples for cognizing something absolutely a priori” (A/B). And in a
prior passage from the B Introduction, he distinguishes a priori cognition
from pure a priori cognition by saying that the former but not the latter
may include concepts drawn from experience. As he puts it, what distin-
guishes pure a priori cognition from merely a priori cognition is that in the
former, but not the latter, “nothing empirical is intermixed” (B).

It is typically thought that Kant’s references to “general logic” in his discussion of transcendental
logic are enthymematic references to “pure general logic,” and hence that he models transcendental
logic on pure general logic and not general logic in its entirety. See Tonelli, Kant’s “Critique of Pure
Reason,” p. ; M. Wolff, Die Vollständigkeit der kantischen Urteilstafel, p. ; and especially
Longuenesse, “The Divisions of Transcendental Logic and the Leading Thread,” p. . This
view is also implicit in the work of a number of other scholars who have little or nothing to say
about the distinction between applied and pure general logic and, hence, effectively treat general
logic as if it consisted only in its pure part. See, for example, Strawson, The Bounds of Sense, p. ;
Pippin, Kant’s Theory of Form, pp.  and –; Mosser, Possibility and Necessity, pp. – and
–; and Tolley, “The Generality of Kant’s Transcendental Logic,” esp. p. .

Cf. A/B and A/B.
 Wolff’s Empirical Psychology & Transcendental Logic
There are passages in the Critique, however, that indicate that Kant
recognizes another conception of purity that is not associated with a priori
cognition as such, but with the ability of one cognitive faculty to create
representations without relying on the others. In his provisional formula-
tion of transcendental logic, for example, Kant considers the possibility
that some concepts relate to objects “not as pure or sensible intuitions but
rather merely as acts of pure thinking,” emphasizes that such concepts
would be “of neither empirical nor aesthetic origin,” and characterizes an
account of them as part of the “science of pure understanding and of the
pure cognition of reason” (A/B). Although the concepts in question
are what Kant will subsequently call the categories (or pure concepts of the
understanding) and these are also a priori and, hence, pure in the sense
outlined above, the use of “pure” in these passages does not connote their
apriority, but rather their independence from intuition and sensibility.
This same conception of purity can also be found in many of Kant’s
discussions of the pure understanding. In the Introduction to the Tran-
scendental Analytic, for example, Kant writes that the “pure understanding
separates itself completely not only from everything empirical, but even
from all sensibility” (A/B, my emphasis). Similarly, he characterizes
the task of the Analytic of Concepts as the analysis of the understanding
whose purpose is to “research the possibility of a priori concepts by seeking
them only in the understanding . . . and analyzing its pure use in general”
(A/B, second emphasis mine). In the opening paragraphs of the
Analytic of Concepts, he then returns to this characterization by empha-
sizing that the categories arise “pure and unmixed from the understanding”
(A/B). Finally, the task of the Schematism arises from the fact that
the “pure concepts of the understanding” are “entirely unhomogeneous”
with both empirical and a priori intuition, so if all that were meant by the
designation “pure” was that these concepts are a priori, Kant’s statement of
this task would make little sense (A/B).
As is often the case, traces of both of these conceptions can be found in
the works of Kant’s German contemporaries. In particular, the first can be
traced to the conception of purity that underlies Wolff’s discussion of pure
reason, while the second can be traced to the conception of purity that
underlies his discussion of the pure understanding. Since these views

Despite the relevance of these discussions of purity to Kant, very little has been written about them.
Indeed, apart from the present discussion and my “Pure Understanding, the Categories, and Kant’s
Critique of Wolff,” the only attempt I am aware of to connect them to Kant is Baumann, Wolffsche
Begriffsbestimmungen: Ein Hilfsbüchlein beim Studium Kants ().
Brian A. Chance 
receive their most detailed treatment in Wolff’s empirical psychology,
it is to this portion of his corpus that I now turn.
In Wolff’s Deutsche Metaphysik (German Metaphysics), the third chapter
of which contains his empirical psychology, he defines reason as the ability
to have insight into the “connection of truths” and asserts that one has
such an insight when one understands the reason or ground of those
truths. In some cases, it is not possible to acquire this insight without
appealing to one or more empirical claims or concepts, but in others it is.
In these cases, that is, cases in which we have insight “into the connections
of things in such a way that one can connect truths with others without
assuming any empirical propositions,” Wolff says that our reason is pure
(lauter). In his Psychologia empirica, Wolff also explicitly connects
pure reason with apriority, asserting that reason is pure (pura) when
“in reasoning we do not admit anything except definitions and propos-
itions understood a priori.” Moreover, while Wolff’s conception of
rational cognition has an obvious affinity with the older, broadly Aristotel-
ian conception of a priori cognition as “cognition from the ground,” his
conception of pure rational cognition is more narrow than the former
precisely because it does not require empirical claims or concepts and is
thus also a priori in Kant’s sense.
In contrast to his discussion of pure reason, Wolff’s discussion of the
pure understanding emphasizes not the apriority of the understanding’s
products, but rather their independence from our other mental faculties.
In the Deutsche Metaphysik, Wolff characterizes the understanding as the
“ability to distinctly represent the possible” and distinguishes it from
the imagination and reason, both of which represent their objects indis-
tinctly. Since our representations may involve more than one faculty,
however, Wolff also distinguishes between representations that involve
the understanding acting on its own and those that involve it acting in
consort with other faculties, especially the senses and the imagination.
In the former cases our understanding is said to be pure (rein), and in the
latter it is said to be impure (unrein). As Wolff puts it in the Psychologia
empirica, the “understanding is pure [purus], if it is free from sense and
imagination, and is indeed pure to the extent it is free from sense
and imagination”
When we consider Kant’s discussions of purity in light of this historical
background, the commingling of the two conceptions outlined above,
  
Deutsche Metaphysik, §. Ibid., §. Psychologia empirica, §.
  
Deutsche Metaphysik, §. Psychologia empirica, §. Ibid., §.
 Wolff’s Empirical Psychology & Transcendental Logic
at times even in the same passage, makes a good deal of sense. There are
times when it serves Kant’s purpose merely to highlight that something is
a priori. In the passage from the B Preface, for example, Kant is discussing
what makes sciences rational, and his claim is that they are rational only to
the extent that they contain a priori cognitions. Similarly, in the first
passage from the B Introduction, Kant attempts to clarify his conception
of apriority, while in the second, he introduces us to his conception of pure
reason. In each of these cases, Kant contrasts a lesser form of a priori
cognition with one that is “wholly” (Bx) or “absolutely” (B and A/B)
a priori. At other times, however, Kant needs to highlight that a cognitive
faculty that is pure in the first sense is also the sole source of an a priori
representation, and in these cases, the connotation of pure shifts subtly to
accomplish this purpose. This is the case in Kant’s discussion of the
categories at A/B, A/B, A/B, A/B, and A/B,
but it is also the case in many of his discussions of the a priori intuitions of
space and time as well as the ideas of reason, since it is important to his
overall ambition in the Critique that these representations are pure in the
narrower sense.
. Kant’s Taxonomy of Logics and the Wolffian Tradition

Having identified Kant’s two conceptions of purity and traced their
Wolffian roots, we are now one step closer to identifying the deepest
Wolffian influence on the structure of the Transcendental Logic. In
particular, I will argue in the next section that transcendental logic is
divided into pure and applied parts and that the sense in which the former
are pure corresponds to the second of the conceptions of purity I have just
outlined. Since Kant introduces transcendental logic as an analogue to
what he terms “general logic,” however, I must first clarify his conception
of logic and its relationship to the Wolffian tradition. As we will see, while

See, e.g., A–/B.

Aspects of this view are controversial. For a reading of the pure intuitions of space and time, as well as
the categories, that asserts the dependence of each on both the understanding and sensibility, see
Longuenesse, Kant and the Capacity to Judge, pp. – and –, and “Kant on A priori
Concepts: the Metaphysical Deduction of the Categories,” pp. –, at . See also Waxman,
Kant’s Model of the Mind, pp. – and , and Kant and the Empiricists: Understanding
Understanding, pp. , , and –. For an argument against the dependence of the pure
intuitions of space and time on the understanding, see Messina, “Kant on the Unity of Space and
Time and the Synthetic Unity of Apperception,” and for an argument against the dependence of the
categories on sensibility, see Chance, “Pure Understanding.”
Brian A. Chance 
Kant borrows liberally from the terminology of this tradition, the tax-
onomy he endorses is largely separate from it.
In an approach that one can trace back to Arnauld and Nicole’s 
La Logique ou l’art de penser or Logic or the Art of Thinking (Port Royal
Logic), Wolff’s  Deutsche Logik (German Logic) is divided into
accounts of concept formation, judgment, inference, and a discussion of
method. In contrast to the Port Royal, however, the Deutsche Logik is not at
all neatly divided into these sections, but is instead divided into sixteen
chapters, of which the first four correspond roughly to the first three parts
of the Port Royal and the last twelve roughly to its final part on method.
In his condensed presentation of Wolff’s system in , Ludwig
Thümmig labeled the contents of the first four of these sections the
“theoretical” part of Wolff’s logic and the contents of the last twelve the
“practical” part. Wolff then endorsed this distinction the following year
in his Ausführliche Nachricht von seinen eigenen Schrifften (Detailed Report
on the Author’s own Writings) () and applied it retroactively to the
chapter divisions of the Deutsche Logik. He then explicitly incorporated
the distinction into the structure and table of contents of his Philosophia
rationalis sive logica (), distinguishing between a “Pars I sive Theore-
tica” and a “Pars II sive Practica,” after which point the distinction and
terminology become the standard if not universally accepted way to divide
the subject of logic and logic textbooks in Germany, both in the Wolffian
tradition and elsewhere.
Yet while Kant does liken the Critique’s Doctrine of Method to practical
logic in this sense, his discussion of logic in the Introduction to the
Transcendental Logic (hereafter Introduction) is not framed in terms of
the theoretical-practical distinction. Moreover, while some of Kant’s
terminology appears to be drawn from less-orthodox Wolffians, such as
Martin Knutzen, J. G. Darjes, and G. F. Meier, his use of this terminology
differs markedly from theirs. Thus, while Knutzen divides his logic into a
“general” and a “special” part, this division does not correspond to Kant’s
division between general and special logic, about which I will have more to
say in a moment, but to the Wolffian theoretical-practical division.
Similarly, while Darjes and others divide logic into analytical and dialect-
ical parts, Kant rejects Darjes’s identification of the dialectical part of logic

See Institutiones philosophiae Wolfianae, §§ and .

G. F. Meier, Auszug aus der Vernunftlehre, § alludes to the distinction but does not incorporate it
into the structure of his logic.
 
Cf. A/B. Elementa philosophiae rationalis seu logicae, §.
 Wolff’s Empirical Psychology & Transcendental Logic
with probability. Finally, while Meier’s way of drawing the Wolffian
distinction between theoretical and practical logic has a certain affinity
with Kant’s division of general logic into pure and applied parts, Kant also
goes to great lengths to distinguish what he calls applied logic from the
practical logic of “the schools” (A/B). Indeed, the only unambigu-
ous way Kant follows the tradition is in his insistence that logic is the
science of the rules for the correct use of the understanding. Yet even here
Kant’s agreement is in part only nominal, since in his discussions of logic,
Wolff frequently uses “understanding” in a broad sense that includes our
sensible faculties, which Kant’s conception of logic explicitly excludes.
Instead of trying to align Kant’s discussion of logic with the Wolffian
tradition, then, I believe it is best to treat the taxonomy he outlines in the
Introduction as sui generis. In the first section of the Introduction, Kant
defines logic as the “science of the rules of the understanding in general”
and distinguishes between two “aims” with which this science can
be undertaken (A/B). The first is the aim of examining the general
use of the understanding and constitutes general logic that “contains the
absolutely necessary rules of the understanding, without which no use of
the understanding takes place” and “concerns these rules without regard
to the different objects to which it [i.e., the understanding] may be
directed” (A/B). The second is the aim of examining the rules for
the use of the understanding when it is applied to a particular kind of
object and is called a special logic.
Although Tonelli has argued that the entire Critique should be regarded
as a special logic for metaphysics, Kant appears to introduce the notion of a
special logic only to set it aside. The term does not appear again in the
Critique, and while one might be tempted to regard Kant’s discussion of
the mathematical method in the Discipline of Pure Reason as an instance
of a special logic (in this case, one for mathematics), his larger aim in that
section is not to revisit this species of logic, but to establish a set of rules for
the use of pure reason designed to mitigate or eliminate the deception
associated with transcendental illusion.

See Tonelli, “Der historische Ursprung der kantischen Termini ‘Analytik’ und ‘Dialektik.’” Meier
(Auszug, §) also alludes to this distinction.

See, e.g., Wolff, Deutsche Logik, “Vorbericht von der Weltweisheit,” § and Deutsche Logik, ch. ,
§.

See Tonelli, Kant’s ‘Critique of Pure Reason,’ p. . Cf. M. Wolff, Vollständigkeit, p. . For
criticism, see Tolley, “Generality,” pp. –.

Thanks to Desmond Hogan for raising this concern. See Chance, “Kant and the Discipline of
Reason,” for a detailed reading of the Discipline along the lines indicated here.
Brian A. Chance 
In contrast, Kant does mention general logic again in several parts of the
Critique, always in an attempt to explain some aspect of transcendental
logic; and in the Introduction, he further divides general logic into pure
and applied parts. The former is an entirely a priori science that “abstracts
from all empirical conditions under which our understanding is exercised,”
while the latter is an a posteriori science that concerns the rules for the use
of the understanding “under the subjective empirical conditions that
psychology teaches” (A/B). Among these conditions are “the influ-
ence of the senses, . . . play of imagination, laws of memory, the power of
habit, inclination and . . . the sources of prejudice” (A/B). Subse-
quently, Kant writes that applied general logic is a “representation of the
understanding and the rules for its necessary use in concreto, namely under
the contingent conditions of the subject, which can hinder or promote this
use, and which can all be given only empirically” (A/B). Such a
representation, Kant continues:
deals with attention, its hindrance and consequences, the cause of error, the
condition of doubt, of reservation, of conviction, etc., and general and pure
logic is related to it as pure morality, which contains merely the necessary
moral laws of a free will in general, is related to the doctrine of virtue
proper, which assesses these laws under the hindrances of the feelings,
inclinations, and passions to which human beings are more or less subject,
and which can never yield a true and proven science, since it requires
empirical and psychological principles just as much as that applied
logic does. (A/B)
The analogy Kant draws in this passage between pure and applied logic,
on the one hand, and pure morality and the doctrine of virtue, on the
other, is instructive. Just as there is one normative law to which the wills of
all rational beings are subject (i.e., the moral law), there is also one
normative law (or set of laws) to which all use of the understanding is
subject. Further, just as there are various ways in which the contingent
features of rational beings help or hinder the complete determination of
their wills by the moral law and, hence, their use of the will in accordance
with its supreme rule, there are also ways in which these features may help
or hinder the determination of the understanding in accordance with the
rules of pure general logic and, hence, help or hinder our use of the
understanding in accordance with the rules that govern it. Finally, just as
there will be as many doctrines of virtue – in the sense Kant uses the term
here – as there are kinds of rational beings whose wills are subject to
different “empirical and psychological principles,” there will also be as
many applied general logics as there are different “contingent conditions of
 Wolff’s Empirical Psychology & Transcendental Logic
the subject,” or, what is perhaps a better way to put it, as there are subjects
with different contingent conditions (A/B). Thus, applied general
logic can be described as an attempt to tailor the rules of pure general
logic to different rational beings or kinds of rational beings, each of which
has the same faculty of the understanding, but must also exercise this
faculty under different empirical conditions.
Despite some obvious similarities between Kant’s applied general logic
and Wolff’s practical logic, including the fact that “applied” is a term Kant
sometimes uses to describe the latter, he presents them as distinct. Thus, in
a parenthetical comment inserted before his description of applied logic
at A/B, he contrasts his understanding of applied general logic with
“the common signification of this word, according to which it ought to
contain certain exercises [Exerzitien] to which pure logic gives the rule”
(A/B). The word whose “common signification” Kant alludes to is
“applied” (angewandt), and the “exercises” in question are specific applica-
tions (Anwendungen) of the accounts of concept formation, judgment,
and inference presented in theoretical logic, such as the discovery of new
truths or the presentation to others of views one believes to be true.
Importantly, however, this task is distinct from the presentation of the
highly general yet still empirically conditioned ways in which features
of human psychology help or hinder our ability to adhere to the necessary
conditions for the correct use of the understanding laid out in pure general
logic. While, for example, practical logic teaches us how to use the
account of the syllogism to produce actual demonstrations (i.e., chains
of syllogisms beginning from or traced back to first principles) of claims,
applied general logic might focus on the ways in which a person’s discern-
ment or attentiveness affects her ability to correctly apply these rules.
The former is the application of a logical rule to a specific instance, while
the latter is the process of adapting universally valid logical rules to a
certain kind of thinker.
In the second section of the Introduction, the section entitled
“On transcendental logic,” Kant then proceeds to introduce transcendental
logic by way of contrast with general logic. That is, Kant proceeds to
introduce his reader to the hitherto unknown discipline of transcendental
logic by suggesting that it will be like the discipline of general logic, the
outlines of which he has given in section one. “General logic,” he writes,
“abstracts . . . from all content of cognition,” which is to say that it
abstracts from “any relation of [cognition] to the object” and “considers
only the logical form in the relation of cognitions to one another,” which
form he glosses as the “form of thinking in general” (A/B). Since the
Brian A. Chance 
Transcendental Aesthetic has shown us that there are both pure and
empirical intuitions of objects (i.e., the pure forms of space and time and
the mathematical objects constructible by means of those forms, on the
one hand, and those same forms imbued with the “matter” of sensation,
on the other), it is now possible to distinguish between a “pure and
empirical thinking of objects” (A/B, my emphasis). This latter distinc-
tion allows us to conceive of a new kind of logic, that is, a new set of rules
for the use of the understanding, that does not abstract from all the
content of cognition, as general logic does, but rather abstracts merely
from all the empirical content of cognition, leaving behind the pure
content, the existence of which was established in the Aesthetic. Such a
logic, that is, a set of rules for the use of the understanding with respect
to the pure content of cognition, is the discipline Kant introduces as
transcendental logic (cf. A/B).
. General Logic (Pure and Applied) and Transcendental Logic

It is often thought that the references Kant makes to “general logic” in
section two of the Introduction (two in the first paragraph and one in the
last) are in fact references to pure general logic. Moreover, since Kant’s
characterization of pure logic does little to distinguish it from the theoret-
ical logic of the Wolffian tradition, this reading serves to strengthen the
view of Adickes, Tonelli, Guyer, Wood, and others that the Transcenden-
tal Logic borrows its structure largely from the logics of Kant’s German
contemporaries. The justification for this reading seems to be that, since
applied general logic is a posteriori and transcendental logic is a priori, there
can be nothing in applied general logic to which anything in transcenden-
tal logic is analogous; and if it is not general logic in toto to which Kant is
referring in these passages, as the previous observation would seem to
indicate, the only reasonable conclusion is that he is referring merely
to pure general logic.
On its face, however, this suggestion is puzzling. In the first place, Kant
does not provide the least indication at any point in the Introduction that
he intends to use “general logic” as an abbreviation for “pure general logic.”
It is true, of course, that he claims only the pure part of general logic is
“properly a science,” but he does so in the context of also reaffirming
that general logic has both pure and applied parts (A/B). Moreover,

See the literature cited in note .

This is essentially Longuenesse’s objection in “Divisions of Transcendental Logic,” p. .
 Wolff’s Empirical Psychology & Transcendental Logic
he concludes the first section of the Introduction, the section titled
“On logic in general,” with the long description of applied general logic
from which I quoted a few paragraphs back. In the longer paragraph from
which this description is drawn, Kant’s sole concern is to elaborate on his
conception of applied general logic, and this paragraph is meant to comple-
ment the elaboration of his conception of pure general logic contained in
the immediately preceding paragraph. Thus, Kant spends two long para-
graphs of “On logic in general,” nearly one-third of the section, elaborating
on the parts of general logic, and he places this discussion immediately
before his comparison of general logic with transcendental logic at the start
of the next section. Further, there is no indication that Kant discusses
applied general logic in order to set it aside. Quite the contrary: the fact that
Kant discusses it in the depth he does indicates that it will be relevant to the
discussion of transcendental logic that immediately follows.
In addition to the textual evidence in favor of taking Kant at his word
when he draws an analogy between general logic in its entirety and
transcendental logic, it is also important to note that the primary argument
against doing so is deeply flawed. To see why this is so, consider first that
the juridical deductions of the Holy Roman Empire were empirical and
that Kant nevertheless chose them as the model for the (clearly a priori)
transcendental deduction. The reason their empirical status did not
prevent him from doing so, of course, is that two things can be analogous
in some respects without being analogous in all respects. Indeed, this is
especially true on Kant’s somewhat idiosyncratic account of analogy,
according to which an analogy does not signify “an imperfect similarity
between two things, but rather a perfect similarity between two relations in
wholly dissimilar things” (Pro, :; cf. A/B). To say that A is
analogous to B is thus to say that there is some C that stands in relation to
A and some D that stands in relation to B, and that there is a “perfect
similarity” between the relation in which A stands to C and the relation in
which B stands to D. It is beyond doubt that Kant introduces transcen-
dental logic as a field of inquiry that is analogous to something he calls
“general logic,” but the fact that general logic has both an a priori and an
empirical part does not entail that transcendental logic can be analogous to
general logic only if it too has an a priori and an empirical part. Rather,
all that is needed to justify Kant’s analogy is the existence of elements in

Cf. G, :n and JL, :.

See Henrich, “Kant’s Notion of a Deduction and the Methodological Background of the First
Critique.”
Brian A. Chance 
transcendental logic that stand in the same relationship to each other as
pure general logic stands to applied general logic. And since applied general
logic concerns the ways in which cognitive elements extraneous to the
understanding affect the use of the understanding prescribed in pure
general logic, the fact that applied general logic is empirical would only
preclude the existence of such elements if the only relevant relation
between pure and applied general logic were the a priori–empirical one.
As we have seen, of course, Kant operates with two different concep-
tions of purity in the Critique, the second of which is distinct from the
a priori–empirical relation. In particular, as we saw in section two, it is
important to Kant’s conception of the pure intuitions of space and time,
the pure concepts of the understanding, and the ideas of reason that they
are pure not only in the sense of being a priori representations, but also in
the sense of being products of a single mental faculty. Moreover, pure
general logic is also pure in both of these senses. That is, it is both an
a priori science and one that describes the capacities of the understanding
irrespective of its interaction with other mental faculties. As a result, one
can identify at least two relations between pure and applied general logic
that could serve as the basis for an analogy between general logic and
transcendental logic. The first is the a priori–empirical relation, and the
second is the relationship between the activity of the understanding on its
own and its activity in conjunction with our other mental faculties.
It is with respect to the latter relation that I suggest there is a “perfect
similarity” between the relationship in which pure general logic stands to
applied general logic and the relationship in which certain portions of the
Transcendental Logic stand to others. In particular, I suggest that the first
books of the Transcendental Analytic and Transcendental Dialectic con-
stitute the pure parts of transcendental logic, while their second books
constitute its applied parts. That is, the first book of each part of the
Transcendental Logic addresses the contribution of its respective faculty to
synthetic a priori cognition, genuine in the case of the Analytic and
spurious in the case of the Dialectic, while the second book of each part
addresses the interaction of this faculty with other cognitive faculties,
which interaction is a further part of the production of synthetic a priori
cognition, again genuine in the case of the Analytic and spurious in the
case of the Dialectic.
More specifically, the task of the Analytic of Concepts is to show, first,
in the metaphysical deduction that there are pure concepts of the under-
standing and, second, in the transcendental deduction that (a) these
concepts have “objective validity” and (b) they have such validity always
 Wolff’s Empirical Psychology & Transcendental Logic
and only when applied to objects of sensible intuition, while the task of the
Analytic of Principles is to provide an account of the specific ways in which
these concepts apply to such objects. This account is carried out over the
course of the three chapters of the Analytic of Principles. In the first of
these chapters, the Schematism of the Pure Concepts of the Understand-
ing, Kant provides a spatiotemporal interpretation of each of the twelve
pure concepts of the understanding, showing what results when these
concepts are applied to the subjective, but in contrast to general applied
logic a priori, “conditions under which our understanding is exercised”
(A/B). In the second, the System of Principles of Pure Understand-
ing, Kant then shows how each of these schematized concepts yields a
synthetic a priori principle that governs the way objects of sensible intu-
ition can appear to us; and in the third, On the Ground of the Distinction
of all Objects in general into Phenomena and Noumena, he summarizes
the results of the previous two chapters and introduces the notion of a
noumenon and, in the B-edition, the distinction between a noumenon in
the positive sense and in the negative sense as a boundary concept, or
Grenzbegriff, in order to completely delineate the sphere of the understand-
ing’s proper use.
Similarly, the first book of the Dialectic, On the Concepts of Pure
Reason, provides an account of the way in which the activity of reason
gives rise to a unique set of mental representations, the so-called ideas of
reason (the soul, world-whole, and God), and is meant to parallel the
account provided in the first book of the Analytic of the way in which
the activity of the understanding gives rise to a set of representations unique
to it, that is, the pure concepts of the understanding (or categories). For
its part, the second book of the Dialectic, The Dialectal Inferences of Pure
Reason, describes not the use of these representations, as did the second
book of the Analytic with respect to the categories, but rather the misuse of
these representations that arises from their combination with those of the

Guyer develops this sort of reading of the division of labor between the two books of the Analytic in
“Space, Time, and the Categories.” It might be objected that the way I have characterized the
transcendental deduction actually shows it to be part of applied general logic, as I am conceiving it,
since it is beyond doubt that the deduction concerns itself with the cooperation of the pure
understanding with sensibility and imagination. In reply, I suggest that one way of
understanding the project of the transcendental deduction is as an attempt to establish the
possibility of applied transcendental logic as I have presented it. For what is at issue there is
whether the pure concepts of the understanding can be applied to the material given in pure
intuition to produce the cognition of an object, and this is a question that must be resolved before
one can address the more specific question of how the understanding cooperates with sensibility and
imagination in this way.

On this parallel, see A/B.
Brian A. Chance 
understanding, sensibility, or both. In particular, the Paralogisms of Pure
Reason describe the misuse of the categories that arises when they are
applied to the a priori representation of the “I think”; the Antinomy of
Pure Reason describes the misuse of the categories that arises when they are
applied to “absolute totality in the synthesis of appearances” (A/B);
and the Ideal of Pure Reason describes the misuse of the categories that
arises when they are applied to the a priori idea of the ens realissimum.
As for the appendices to the Analytic and Dialectic (On the Amphiboly
of Concepts of Reflection and Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic),
each falls clearly on the applied side of transcendental logic. Each, of course,
is separated from Kant’s central discussion of applied transcendental logic
in its respective section of the Critique; however, this is because neither fits
well within the general division of transcendental logic into an analytic and a
dialectic. In particular, while the analytic part of transcendental logic focuses
on the use of the understanding in the cognition of truth, the Amphiboly
addresses not the ways in which the pure understanding cooperates with
other pure faculties to produce truth, but instead the ways in which it and
sensibility are misapplied to produce error. Similarly, while the dialectical
part of transcendental logic concerns error, the Appendix addresses not the
ways in which the ideas of reason are misapplied to produce error, but rather
the ways in which their regulative use may guide us to new truths.
Once we are primed to read the Transcendental Logic in this way,
additional evidence comes into view. In particular, if one follows Kant’s
use of “applied” and its cognates, it becomes clear that he signals many of
the divisions I have mentioned. In “On transcendental logic,” for example,
he comments that a cognition is only properly termed transcendental when
it is one “by means of which we cognize that and how certain representa-
tions (intuitions or concepts) are applied entirely a priori, or are possible”
(A/B). If we relate this passage to the content of the Transcendental
Logic, it is easy to see Kant presenting in miniature the basic divisions of
the Analytic I have just sketched. The metaphysical deduction establishes
“that and how” the pure concepts of the understanding “are possible,”
while the transcendental deduction establishes that these concepts can be
“applied a priori” and the Analytic of Principles establishes how this
application is possible. Similarly, in the Introduction to the Analytic of
Principles – the introduction to what I am calling the applied part of the
Transcendental Analytic – Kant emphasizes that, in contrast to general
logic, transcendental logic does not merely give the rule for the power of
judgment to follow, but is also able to “indicate a priori the case to which
the rules ought to apply” (A/B).
 Wolff’s Empirical Psychology & Transcendental Logic
Given that Kant also tends to use “use” (Gebrauch) and its cognates in a
way that suggests it has broadly the same connotation as “application,” we
can identify additional passages of the Critique that signpost the divisions
I have outlined. In the continuation of the passage at A/B, for
example, Kant glosses the task of the Schematism as dealing with
“the sensible conditions under which pure concepts can be employed
[gebraucht],” but in the passages of the Schematism that immediately
follow, he consistently discusses the “application” of the categories
(A/B; cf. A–/B–). Similarly, in the final sentence of
the B-Deduction, Kant announces that he will discontinue his practice
of numbering the sections of the Critique, because he has reached the
end of his discussion of “elementary concepts” and is turning in the second
book of the Analytic to the representation of their “use” (B). Thus, in
addition to capturing the conceptual divisions between the various parts of
the Transcendental Logic in an especially clear way, the account of its
structure I have presented is also supported by many of Kant’s program-
matic statements in this part of the Critique.
. Conclusion
In this chapter, I have argued that the deepest Wolffian influence on the
structure of the Transcendental Logic is not from Wolff’s works on logic,
as commentators from Adickes to Guyer and Wood have tended to
think, but from his empirical psychology. Specifically, I have argued that
Kant recognizes not one, but two conceptions of purity, both of which
can be traced to Wolff, and that the second of these conceptions,
according to which a representation is pure just in case it is the product
of a single mental faculty, is central to both Kant’s conception of
transcendental logic and the structure of the Transcendental Logic.
As Kant emphasizes in the Critique’s original table of contents, the
Transcendental Logic is divided into the Transcendental Analytic and
the Transcendental Dialectic, each of which is further divided into “two
books and their various chapters and sections” (Axxiii). On my account,
the first of these books constitutes the pure part of its respective division,
while the second constitutes the applied part. Both of these parts are pure
in the first sense Kant recognizes – they are a priori – but since it is clear
from the outset that Kant conceives of transcendental logic as an a priori
discipline, it is only the second conception of purity that allows us to

Thanks to Alexandra Newton for pressing me on this point.
Brian A. Chance 
properly distinguish the various parts of transcendental logic and,
by extension, the Transcendental Logic.
That the proper division of transcendental logic has gone unrecognized
for more than two centuries is due primarily to two factors. The first is the
dismissive attitude that interpreters of Kant, from Schopenhauer to the
present, have taken toward the relationship between the form and content
of the Critique, and the second is an overemphasis on what I have
suggested are largely superficial similarities between transcendental logic
and the logics of Kant’s predecessors. In particular, while parts of tran-
scendental logic are similar to the accounts of concept formation, judg-
ment, and inference found in these logics, I have argued that these
similarities do not pick out the most significant conceptual divisions of
transcendental logic or the most important structural divisions of the
Transcendental Logic.
In addition to its overall coherence, one advantage of this reading is that
it provides a ready explanation for an otherwise puzzling feature of the
Transcendental Logic, namely that it devotes so much space to sensibility
and imagination. On its face, this feature is in tension with the assumption
that Kant models the Transcendental Logic on the logics of the Wolffian
tradition, since apart from referencing the senses as a source for the content
of concepts, these logics have very little to say about the senses or
sensibility, and even less to say about the imagination. Moreover, even if
we assume, as I have argued we should, that Kant presents general logic as
a largely sui generis discipline, the extensive discussions of sensibility and
imagination in the Transcendental Logic make it remarkably unlike the
pure part of general logic, which, as we have seen, is what most commen-
tators have mistakenly believed is the model for Transcendental Logic.
Clinton Tolley has recently attempted to address this problem by
claiming that, despite appearances, the Analytic of Principles and the entire
Transcendental Dialectic are not part of the discipline of transcendental
logic at all, but rather a “special logic for thought about objects of
experience.” Since this reading involves attributing to Kant the view that
the vast majority of the material addressed in the portion of the Critique
called Transcendental Logic is not, in fact, part of the discipline of
transcendental logic, I believe we should resist it. Fortunately, the assump-
tion that the Transcendental Logic recapitulates the structure of general
logic in both its pure and applied parts provides us with a straightforward
explanation for the importance of sensibility and imagination in these

Tolley, “Generality,” p.  and cf. p. n.
 Wolff’s Empirical Psychology & Transcendental Logic
sections of the Critique, namely that, as the applied parts of general logic,
their purpose is to elaborate on the ways in which the understanding operates
in conjunction with other cognitive faculties to produce genuine synthetic
a priori cognition, in the case of the Analytic, and spurious synthetic a priori
cognition, in the case of the Dialectic.
More broadly, the fact that a conceptual distinction introduced within
Wolff’s empirical psychology turns out to be central to Kant’s conception
of transcendental logic suggests that more attention should be paid to
the relationship between Wolffian psychology and the Critique. Falk
Wunderlich has recently drawn attention to the relevance of Wolffian
psychology to the project of the transcendental deduction. However,
the argument of this essay suggests the need for a broader examination of
Wolffian psychology in relation to the project of the Transcendental Logic
as a whole. Kant’s reliance on the second of Wolff’s conceptions of purity
in this part of the Critique also naturally raises the question of whether his
conceptual debt to Wolff extends beyond the Transcendental Logic to
other parts of the Critique. Finally, given the many contexts in which the
notion of purity plays a central role in Kant’s philosophy, it is natural to
ask whether the Wolffian views I have identified can shed light on his
philosophy more generally.
A detailed examination of these issues lies beyond the scope of this essay.
Yet it is a measure of the importance of reading Kant not merely against
the background of Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Hume, and
Berkeley, but also of his German contemporaries, that an examination of
Wolff’s influence on the structure of the Transcendental Logic allows us
to raise them.

See Wunderlich, Kant und die Bewußtseinstheorien.

I am grateful to Lawrence Pasternack for comments on previous versions of this paper.
 
From Logical Calculus to Logical Formality:

What Kant Did with Euler’s Circles
Huaping Lu-Adler
. Introduction
John Venn, in his monumental Symbolic Logic, laments the lack of progress
in mathematical logic between J. H. Lambert and George Boole and
expresses an “uneasy suspicion” that it was due to Kant’s “disastrous effect
on logical method,” the effect being the “strictest preservation [of logic] from
mathematical encroachment.” There is some truth to this speculation. In a
way, Kant did want to preserve logic from mathematical encroachment.
He was not entirely averse to the use of mathematical tools in logic,
however. So his objection to mathematics encroaching on logic cannot be
a straightforward call for banishing all mathematical devices from logic.
Rather, as a knowing reader of Kant would suspect, the objection must
have primarily to do with certain philosophical considerations about the very
nature of logic and its relation to mathematics. The question is what such
considerations might be.
Without aiming at a complete answer to this question, my primary goal
in this chapter is to situate the question itself in a historical context where
it may be investigated in a philosophically fruitful manner. Specifically,
I consider what the mathematical encroachment upon logic – as a histor-
ical happening – might look like from Kant’s perspective, what conceptual
tools he might invoke to counter it, and what room he might still leave for
mathematics in logic. To this end, I examine his use of circles in logic in
comparison with Leonhard Euler’s (as the most likely source of the
former). I treat both uses of the circle notation as episodes of a broader
narrative of how the project of logical calculus, as G. W. Leibniz first
envisioned it, fared in eighteenth-century Germany.

Venn, Symbolic Logic, pp. xxxiv–xxxvi.

 From Logical Calculus to Logical Formality
a
d
Figure . The relation between two concepts in a categorical judgment

in abstraction from its quantity and quality.
(a)
Figure .a. Every B is A.
(b)
A B
Figure .b. No A is B.
. Preliminaries
Kant uses circles (and occasionally squares) to represent logical relations
between concepts in judgments and inferences. Here are three kinds of
examples.
(i) Figure  represents the schematic relation between two concepts in a
categorical judgment in abstraction from its quantity and quality: the
subject, represented by the inner circle, is subordinate to the predicate,
represented by the outer circle.
(ii) Figures .a through .d represent the four basic forms of categorical
judgments.

R , :; see R , :; JL, :.

R , :; R , :; R , :.
Huaping Lu-Adler 
(c)
A B
Figure .c. Some A is B.
(d)
A B
Figure .d. Some A is not B.
(a)
C
A
Figure .a. All C is B, all A is C; therefore, all A is B. Or: All A is C; all C is B;

therefore, some B is A.
(b)
C A
Figure .b. All C is B; some A is C; therefore, some A is B.
(iii) Circles can also represent relations among the three terms in a
categorical syllogism (Figures .a, .b).
What shall we make of these diagrams? Are they meant, as Carl Prantl
says of the “ingenious invention” of circle diagrams, merely to visualize

R , :.
 From Logical Calculus to Logical Formality
certain relations of concepts so as to facilitate “the training of stupid
heads”? Or is there something deeper at play? Kant does not say. But
we can gather his answer from various materials: yes, there is something
deeper at play.
Two kinds of materials are relevant here. One pertains to Kant’s
conception of logical formality, which sets the philosophical parameters
for his treatment of logical notations. The other involves the historical
context in which he adopted the circle notation. I begin with the latter.
Euler is often deemed the first to have used the circle notation, in his
Letters of Euler to a German Princess (written during –). Although
some historians have pointed out even earlier uses of circles (or similar
figures) in logic, Euler’s was Kant’s most likely source. More importantly,
as I shall explain, there are good reasons to see Euler’s use of the circle
notation as a conscious choice in an intellectual milieu where leading
mathematicians and logicians were intrigued by, passionately engaged in,
or otherwise cautious about the project of logical calculus, of which the
design of mathematically exact logical notations was a critical part. Euler
did not directly address the philosophical issues raised by such a project,
but Kant would. Scrutinizing their respective uses of the circle notation
will give us an opportunity to puzzle out their different positions in this
respect.
Before I pursue this line of thought, a methodological note is in order
regarding how to assess Euler’s philosophical influence on Kant. Though
primarily a mathematician and physicist, Euler wrote a fair amount on
philosophical topics, most notably on the essence of matter and the nature
of space and time. Commentators are divided over how to interpret his
relation with philosophy. By one estimate, Euler was, at best, “inciden-
tally” productive in philosophy: “Euler’s philosophizing is in a very special
way a dispute with other authors’ philosophies. There is no peculiarly
‘Eulerian’ philosophical question, no special problem worrying or tortur-
ing him.” On a contrary reading, Euler perhaps alone deserves the high

Prantl, Geschichte der Logik im Abendlande, vol. , p. .

The first volume, which contains the letters that interest us here, was published in  (Lettres à une
princesse d’Allemagne, St. Petersburg). References to the Letters are to letter numbers and pages of the
English translation by Hunter ().

On uses of geometrical diagrams in logic before Euler, see Ueberweg, System der Logik und Geschichte
der logischen Lehren, p. ; and Venn, Symbolic Logic, pp. –. Leibniz used them in two of his
 manuscripts, De formae logicae comprobatione per linearum ductus (“On Proving Logical Forms
by Drawing Lines”) and Generales inquisitiones de analysi notionum et veritatum (“General Inquiries
about the Analysis of Notions and Truths”). But neither manuscript was published until .
 
Breidert, “Leonhard Euler and Philosophy,” pp. –. Ibid., pp. –.
Huaping Lu-Adler 
merit of “hustling the philosophy of the mid-th century out of an
impasse by provoking discussions.” Although this is likely an overstate-
ment, Euler played a pioneering role at least in eighteenth-century phil-
osophy of science. In this regard, he is sometimes portrayed as a
philosophically minded scientist who made concerted efforts to construct
a physics in accordance with his “scientific metaphysics,” with respect to
which he was no less a philosophical “system-builder” and “concept-
creator” than Descartes, Leibniz, or Kant was. Regardless of whether
this comparison to Descartes et al. is apt, Euler’s staunch defense of
the Newtonian view on the relation between metaphysics and natural
philosophy evidently impressed Kant.
To illustrate, here is a well-known case. In an article entitled “Reflexions
sur l’espace et le tems” (“Reflections on Space and Time”) (written in
 but printed in ), Euler argues that metaphysics as the study of
the nature and properties of body must agree with the already established
truths of mechanics, so that metaphysical ideas that lead to conclusions
contrary to these truths must be rejected. Following this principle, he
repudiates the Leibnizian-Wolffian relational theory of space and time in
favor of the Newtonian conception of absolute space and time as that
which undergirds the laws of mechanics. Referring to Euler’s article, Kant
agrees that in order for metaphysical inquiries about space and time to stay
“on the path of truth,” they must be founded on “reliably established data”
such as those furnished by the “mathematical observation of motion,
combined with [geometrical] cognition of space.” Along these lines, he
commends Euler’s effort to prove the independent reality of absolute
space a posteriori “by employing other indisputable propositions . . . lying
outside the realm of metaphysics” as opposed to “employing the most
abstract judgments of metaphysics.” In the meantime, however, Kant
also finds the proof in question seriously inadequate and proceeds to offer
his own.
This case points to a nuanced philosophical relation between Kant and
Euler. Simply put, if some of Euler’s works raised important philosophical
issues but he did not go far enough with them, Kant could take his
suggestive insights as starting points for digging deeper. From Kant’s

Fellmann, “Leonhard Euler – Ein Essay über Leben und Werk,” p. .

Elkana, “Scientific and Metaphysical Problems: Euler and Kant,” pp.  and .

NM, :. For a comparison of Kant’s and Euler’s views on the relation between metaphysics and
physics, see Laywine, Kant’s Early Metaphysics and the Origins of the Critical Philosophy, pp. –
and .

DDS, :.
 From Logical Calculus to Logical Formality
viewpoint, we may then appreciate retrospectively what Euler had to offer,
the philosophical significance of which might otherwise be underestimated
or overlooked. Meanwhile, to whatever extent Euler’s “incidental” phil-
osophizing may be seen as an engagement with other philosophical pos-
itions on a given subject, a retrospective appraisal may bring a degree of
narrative unity into an array of such positions, in reference to which the
originality of Kant’s stance may also become clear for the first time.
With this general picture of their philosophical relation in the back-
ground, I now proceed to compare Euler’s and Kant’s uses of the circle
notation. I first examine Euler’s use by treating it as but one chapter in a
brief history of the developments of logical calculus from Leibniz to
Lambert, a history that will reveal both the technical challenges confront-
ing this project and the highly contentious nature of its underlying
philosophical ideas (§). I then explain how Kant, who explicitly opposes
the Leibnizian idea of logical calculus, unhitches the circle notation from
that idea and adapts it for a new use in accordance with his distinctive
notion of logical formality (§).
. Euler’s Circles and the Project of Logical Calculus

When Euler introduces circles in the Letters to represent the four basic forms
of categorical propositions, his stated purpose is to “exhibit their nature to the
eye” and thereby provide “a great assistance towards comprehending more
distinctly wherein the accuracy of a chain of reasoning consists.” “These
circles, or rather these spaces, for it is of no importance what figure they are
of, are extremely commodious for facilitating our reflections on this subject,
and for unfolding all the boasted mysteries of logic, which that art finds it so
difficult to explain; whereas, by means of these signs, the whole is rendered
sensible to the eye” (Letter CIII, p. ). If these remarks suggest a merely
figurative use of circles as helpful visual aids to our logical comprehension,
Euler does not stop at that. He goes on to claim that the method of
representing all propositions by circles “will discover to us the true forms
of all syllogisms.” This points to what may be called a proof-theoretical use
of circles: they are means for demonstrating syllogisms.
A couple of historical developments paved the way for this use of the
circle notation. Friedrich Ueberweg has named two of them. One is that

For an overview of the philosophical relation between Kant and Euler, see Timerding, “Kant
und Euler.”
 
Letter CII, pp. –. Letter CIII, p. .
Huaping Lu-Adler 
“the authority of the Aristotelian methods of reduction had been broken,”
and the other is “the inclination of that age toward mathematical treatment
of logic, which among other things paid homage to Leibniz.” That is, by
the time Euler wrote the Letters, it was no longer deemed possible to prove
every syllogism by reducing it to a universal syllogism in the first figure.
Instead, there must be common principles by which to prove any given
form of syllogism as valid or invalid. The mathematical treatment of
logic in a way answered this need. Leibniz was the first to employ both
algebraic and geometrical means to represent propositions and demon-
strate syllogisms. Although he did not publish his results, his conception of
logical calculus was evidently known to the community of German intel-
lectuals who were more or less acquainted with the underlying philosoph-
ical ideas. It was a community to which Euler was intimately connected.
To be specific, Euler was far from the first to publish an account of how
to use mathematical notations to uncover truths about syllogistic forms
systematically. His close friend Daniel Bernoulli (–) had published
an essay in  to show, in detail, how syllogisms can be demonstrated
with mathematical precision by means of algebraic calculus. Long before
then, Leibniz had worked extensively on logical calculus in tandem with
his program of developing a universal characteristic. Although his numer-
ous studies on logical calculus would remain unpublished for more
than two centuries, his dissertation on the combinatorial art (Dissertatio
de arte combinatoria, ) already contained germs for those studies.
Also worth mentioning is the fact that Daniel Bernoulli’s father, Johann
Bernoulli (–), who supervised Euler’s study of mathematics,
was among the first to fully understand Leibniz’s differential (infinitesimal)
calculus and had firsthand knowledge, through correspondence, of what
 
Ueberweg, System der Logik, p. . See Rescher, Galen and the Syllogism, pp. –.

The essay in question is Theses Logicae (“Logical Theses”) (). See especially §§–, where
Bernoulli analyzes propositions and syllogisms in extensional terms, in a way that anticipates Euler’s
analysis: e.g., a universal affirmative proposition means the entirety of what is contained in the
extension of the subject is also contained in that of the predicate, and a Barbara inference is valid in
virtue of the axiom partem partis esse partem totius (part of part is part of whole). Another work
worth mentioning is the Specimen logicae universaliter demonstratae (Specimen of Logic Universally
Demonstrated) (Jena, ) by Johann Andreas Segner (–), an influential mathematician
and one of Euler’s important correspondents from the s on. Like Bernoulli’s Theses Logicae, the
Specimen is an attempt to establish the syllogistic by algebraic calculus, albeit with an intensional
approach.

The unpublished studies include, among others, Specimen calculi universalis (“Specimen of Universal
Calculus”) from circa  and Fundamenta calculi ratiocinatoris (“Fundamentals of the Calculus of
Reasoning”) from around . Leibniz developed significantly different kinds of logical calculus in
various studies. See Rescher, “Leibniz’s Interpretation of His Logical Calculi,” pp. –.
 From Logical Calculus to Logical Formality
Leibniz thought about its philosophical implications. It is impossible to
determine how much of the Bernoulli-Leibniz exchanges might, at least by
way of indirect influence, have shaped Euler’s view on the relation between
mathematics and logic or the power of the latter in calculating truths about
reality. There is little doubt, however, that Euler developed his proof-
theoretical use of the circle notation in an environment where many
important German intellectuals were more or less familiar with the idea
of logical calculus and the companion program of universal characteristic.
Here is one way to put it: “while Leibniz’s logical calculi themselves
remained unknown, his seminal idea of logical calculus . . . inspired later
authors . . . partly because it was anyway ‘floating in the air’ due to the
atmosphere of the admiration for mathematics.” In other words, if an
eighteenth-century thinker could independently develop a logical calculus
that resembled Leibniz’s, it would be because that thinker, like Leibniz,
was practiced in mathematics, understood its power, and had the acumen
to “unify a variety of existing doctrines in a single system.”
Indeed, the Germany of s witnessed critical developments in logical
calculus, with Gottfried Ploucquet (–) and Lambert (–) as
two major players. In , Ploucquet published two essays with telling titles:
Methodus tam demonstrandi directe omnes syllogismorum species . . . ope unius
regulae (“The Method of Directly Demonstrating All Forms of Syllogism . . .
with One Rule”) and Methodus calculandi in logicis (“The Method of Calcu-
lating in Logic”) (a critical commentary on Leibniz’s ars characteristica
is appended to the latter). Lambert published the Neues Organon (New
Organon) in  and De universaliori calculi idea disquisitio (“Inquiry
concerning the Idea of a Universal Calculus”) in , dedicating both to a
project of logical calculus that was closest to how Leibniz had envisioned it.

Johann Bernoulli corresponded with Leibniz from  through . Their correspondences were
published in two volumes in  (Leibnitii et Bernoullii Commercium philosophicum et
mathematicum, Geneva). Discussions of calculus and its implications for the study of nature are
especially abundant in the first volume.

Marciszewski and Murawski, Mechanization of Reasoning in a Historical Perspective, p. . The
authors also mention Christian Wolff, whose “agitation” about pursuing logic with mathematical
precision “helped to consolidate that state of consciousness which ultimately brought the perfect
rendering” of logical calculus (ibid., p. ). On the likelihood that Wolff had deep reasons for not
working out a logical calculus himself (such as pessimism about the prospect of finding a suitable
alphabet of thoughts), see Capozzi and Roncaglia, “Logic and Philosophy of Logic from Humanism
to Kant,” p. .

Capozzi and Roncaglia, “Logic,” p. .

A few years prior, Ploucquet also published Fundamenta philosophiae speculativae (Fundamentals of
Speculative Philosophy) (), where he used squares to represent the quantity of concepts in
inferences (Euler would use circles for basically the same purpose).
Huaping Lu-Adler 
These works represent two fundamentally different approaches to
logical calculus. Ploucquet denies the possibility of a universal calculus
on the following grounds: since a calculus is in essence posterior to the
understanding of the matter to which it is applicable (i.e., we must begin
with considerations of beings), a single universal calculus is in principle out
of reach for us, as it presupposes a kind of universal knowledge of things
that should not be expected of us mortal beings. (It is still feasible,
Ploucquet argues, to design multiple calculi for different domains of
investigation.) For basically the same reason, mutatis mutandis, universal
characteristic is also an impossible project for us.
Lambert champions the opposite view in his Neues Organon. In part I of
this two-volume monograph, the Dianoiology, or doctrine of the laws of
thinking, Lambert analyzes the form of our thoughts in terms of both
intension (Umfang) and extension (Ausdehnung), and uses both geomet-
rical signs (lines) and algebraic ones (e.g., =, >) to represent relations of
concepts in propositions and inferences (Dianoiology, §§–, –,
–). In part III, the Semiotics, or the doctrine of the designation of
thoughts and things, Lambert introduces the idea of an artificial (symbolic)
characteristic with explicit references to Leibniz’s universal characteristic
(allgemeinen Zeichenkunst) and extols algebra as a perfect paradigm thereof
(Semiotics, §§–, ). He then envisions the companion project of a
universal grammar (grammatica universalis) for the characteristic language,
by which we can accurately analyze and represent our knowledge of things
(Semiotics, §§–). Lambert would work out further details of the
algebraic calculus in the  article just mentioned, where he would
reaffirm his commitment to the ideal of universal logical calculus.
This disagreement between Ploucquet and Lambert over logical calculus
generated further exchanges about its direction, which were published in
. The details do not concern us here. What is worth pointing out is
that Lambert would eventually acknowledge that universal calculus, insofar
as it requires universal characteristic, might very well be like the philoso-
pher’s stone or the squaring of the circle. Here, then, is one way to
conclude the Lambert-Ploucquet controversy: both sides came to see that
the prospect of universal calculus was “hindered by a possibly insurmount-
able obstacle: the overpowering amount of philosophical analysis to be

Ploucquet, Methodus calculandi, pp. – and –. For further discussions, see Capozzi and
Roncaglia, “Logic,” pp. –; Marciszewski and Murawski, Mechanization, pp. –.

For further discussions of Lambert’s logical calculus, see Capozzi and Roncaglia, “Logic,”
pp. –; Marciszewski and Murawski, Mechanization, pp. –.

Bök, Sammlung der Schriften, pp. –.
 From Logical Calculus to Logical Formality
A * B
Figure . Some learned men are misers.
B C
Figure . No miser is virtuous.
done in the fields of metaphysics, semiotics, and natural language to reach

a suitable alphabet of thoughts.”
Although the Ploucquet-Lambert controversy took place after the compos-
ition (but before the publication) of the Letters, the historical trend repre-
sented thereby gives us a useful perspective to appreciate the full meaning of
Euler’s proof-theoretical use of the circle notation. A close examination of
this use will suggest his commitment to a moderate version of logical calculus.
To begin, Euler subscribes to the idea that the syllogistic can be proven
by a few constant principles with mathematical precision. He identifies
two such principles, to which “[t]he foundation of all these [valid syllo-
gistic] forms is reduced” and which concern “the nature of containing and
contained”: “whatever is in the thing contained, must likewise be in the
thing containing,” and “whatever is out of the containing, must likewise
be out of the contained.” By these principles, Euler uses circles both to
demonstrate the  forms of perfect syllogisms and to show how to
analyze the remaining  possible forms of syllogisms and prove them
as fallacious. To illustrate the latter, consider this syllogism: “Some
learned men are misers; no miser is virtuous; therefore, some virtuous
men are not learned.” By Euler’s method, this inference can be disproved
in three steps.
First, one represents the three terms by three distinct circles (more
precisely, encircled spaces): circle A = learned man, circle B = miser, circle
C = virtuous man. The second step is to represent the logical relations
expressed in the two premises with Figures  and .
 
Capozzi and Roncaglia, “Logic,” pp. –. Letter CIV, p. .
Huaping Lu-Adler 
(a)
* A B
C *
Figure .a.
(b)
C
A * B
Figure .b.
(c)
A * B
C
Figure .c.
The final step is to determine, by the aforementioned principles of

the containing and the contained, what relation between encircled spaces
A and C follows from the exhibited relations between spaces A and B (some
part of space A is in space B) and between spaces B and C (the whole of
space B is outside of space C). Euler stresses that the first relation concerns
only the part of space A marked by *, which is contained in space B. It is
certain that this * part must lie outside of space C, but how the remainder
of A relates to C is thereby left undetermined. Euler illustrates three possible
manifestations of the latter relation: partial containment (Figure .a), total
containment (Figure .b), or total exclusion (Figure .c). As the given
syllogism captures only the first possibility, it is invalid.

Letter CV, pp. –.
 From Logical Calculus to Logical Formality
(a) (b)
A B
Figure .a. Figure .b.
This use of circles fits with Ploucquet’s definition of “calculus in the

generally accepted sense” as “the method of determining the unknown
from known things according to constant rules.” In Euler’s own words,
syllogisms are the means by which “from certain known truths, you attain
others before unknown” and to which “all the reasonings . . . may be
reduced.” To that extent, the syllogistic provides “the only method of
discovering unknown truths.” Thus, by using circles to represent prop-
ositions and demonstrate syllogisms, Euler has in effect submitted his own
version of logical calculus. It has two components.
One component is an account of the procedure, previously outlined, by
which any given syllogism may be proven valid or invalid. The other is a
system of logical notations, together with rules governing their use, for the
purpose of computing and drawing unknown truths from the known ones.
Here is how Euler introduces his circle notation:
As a general notion contains an infinite number of individual objects,
we may consider it as a space in which they are all contained.
Thus [to represent the judgment all men are mortal,] for the notion of
man we form a space [Figure .a] in which we conceive all men
to be comprehended. For the notion of mortal we form another
[Figure .b] in which we conceive everything mortal to be comprehended.
(Letter CII, p. )

Ploucquet, Methodus calculandi, p. . In a May  letter to E. W. von Tschirnhaus
(–), another important figure in the early developments of calculus, Leibniz defines
calculus broadly as “operation through characters,” which takes place in both counting and
reasoning (Mathematische Schriften von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, vol. , p. ). Notably, this
definition only points to the parallel between algebraic computation and reasoning in terms of what
they have in common. It does not restrict the project of logical calculus to the algebraization of all
reasonings, even though the latter is its best known and most contentious form.

Letter CV, pp. –; CIV, p. .
Huaping Lu-Adler 
This introduction of circles is premised on three claims (besides the

obvious assumption of an extensional approach to the analysis of propos-
itions and inferences). First, general notions are “the source of all our
judgments and of all our reasonings.” Second, general notions are formed
by abstraction, each of which is “applicable to an infinite number of
objects.” Third, general notions can be represented by “signs,” which serve
as proxies for the denoted objects in thoughts and reasonings. A circle
(as encircled space) is a sign in this sense, standing for a general notion by
representing the objects it denotes. More precisely, Euler’s circles signify
general notions that occupy subject and predicate positions in propos-
itions, for only then can they be used to represent various forms of
propositions in accordance with different ways of arranging two encircled
spaces in relation to each other.
We may employ, then, spaces formed at pleasure, to represent every general
notion, and mark the subject of a proposition, by a space containing A, and
the attribute [i.e., predicate], by another, which contains B. The nature of
the proposition itself always imports, either, that the space of A is wholly
contained in the space B, or that it is partly contained in that space; or that
a part, at least, is out of the space B; or, finally, that the space A is wholly
out of B. (Letter CIII, pp. –)
In this way, circles may be used as what Lambert calls “scientific” signs,
which “not only represent those concepts and things in general but also
display [anzeigen] relationships, so that the theory of a thing [Sache] and
the theory of its signs can be interchanged.”
That being said, we do not have enough textual materials to press
further and figure out Euler’s exact attitude toward the overall project of
logical calculus that exercised some of the best minds of his time. For the
purpose of this paper, it suffices to see his proof-theoretical use of the circle
notation as one among many passages in the history of logical calculus
between Leibniz and Kant. This historical connection, along with the
supposition that Euler’s circle notation was the most likely source of
Kant’s, makes one wonder about the philosophical relevance of the latter.
 
Letter CII, pp. –. Lambert, Neues Organon, Semiotics, §.

I suspect that Euler’s position would be like Ploucquet’s: no Leibnizian style of universal language is
needed to apply his logical calculus. The Leibnizian idea of universal characteristic presupposes an
intensional treatment of concepts, according to which each complex concept can be analyzed and
ultimately reduced to a combination of atomic ones. Euler’s circles, by contrast, stand for general
notions with respect to extension, which comprises the multitude of objects falling under each
notion. How a given notion, so construed, relates to other notions in propositions and reasonings is
not revealed through conceptual analysis.
 From Logical Calculus to Logical Formality
. Kant’s Circle Notation: From Logical Calculus

to Logical Formality
Kant foresees the fate of the Leibnizian idea of universal logical calculus in
his  text A New Elucidation of the First Principles of Metaphysical
Cognition. He compares Leibniz’s pronouncement of the ars characteristica
combinatoria (art of combining signs) to the will of the dying father in one
of Aesop’s fables, who tells his children about a hidden treasure somewhere
in his field without saying exactly where.
This [announcement of the father] induced the sons assiduously to turn up
the field and work it over by digging up, until, their hopes disappointed,
they nonetheless found themselves certainly enriched by the fertility of their
field. I suspect, at any rate, that this will be the only fruit, to be sure, which
an examination of that celebrated art will yield, should there be anyone
prepared to devote themselves to the execution of this task . . . For my own
part, I do not deny that, once one has arrived at absolutely first principles, a
certain use of the art of signs may be legitimate, for one has the opportunity
there of employing the concepts and consequently the simplest terms, as
well, as signs. (NE, :, my emphasis)
These remarks suggest that Kant is aware of the difficulties associated with
the Leibnizian program of designing a universal characteristic in terms of
which to analyze all human cognitions for the sake of computation,
without which there would be no universal logical calculus. If he grants
some utility to a logical calculus, he does so with a caveat: it is not a tool for
discovering previously unknown truths, but at best a way to present truths
once they have been discovered on independent grounds. To some extent,
this caveat anticipates Ploucquet’s aforementioned argument that the
design of a feasible logical calculus must be posterior to knowledge of
the relevant domain of inquiry.
For Kant, the fundamental limitation of logical calculus has to do with
the very nature of logic. On his account, logic is not “a universal art of
discovery” or “an algebra, with whose help hidden truths can be dis-
covered.” He makes a similar point by distinguishing organon (instru-
ment or tool of discovery) and canon (criterion or standard for assessment).
A logic, such as Lambert’s, that purports to be the organon for particular
sciences such as mathematics and physics professes to offer the “directive as

Kant goes on to illustrate how proofs by means of calculus involves “an indubitable begging of the
question” (NE, :).

JL, :; see JL, :, ; LV, :.
Huaping Lu-Adler 
to how a certain cognition is to be brought about.” In Kant’s view, logic
(properly so called) can never fulfill this promise. Rather, it is strictly
concerned with the mere form of thought and so can only supply the
“principle of the assessment, not of the construction, of cognition.”
Hence, if Kant allows that circles, squares, and the like may be used to
represent logical relations, his use of such notations will have no real
affinity with the project of logical calculus, as Euler’s did by some meas-
ures. Nor will Kant see the need for a single procedure to prove the
traditional syllogistic, which I mentioned as a possible motivation for
Euler’s adoption of the circle notation. In The False Subtlety of the Four
Syllogistic Figures (–), Kant posits two highest principles by which to
prove valid syllogisms in the first figure, namely “a characteristic mark of a
characteristic mark is a characteristic mark of the thing itself” and “that
which contradicts the characteristic mark of thing, contradicts the thing
itself.” (Note that these principles are formulated in intensional terms.)
As for syllogisms in the remaining figures, they must be transformed,
through a logical conversion or contraposition of one of their premises,
into the first figure before being examined in accordance with the afore-
mentioned principles. Whether Kant is right on this point is a separate
issue. The important thing to note is that, while using circles to represent
certain relations of terms in syllogisms, he is not thereby getting on board
with the project of proving syllogisms as valid or invalid by means of
geometrical figures plus the rules governing their relations. Circles can
serve only to exhibit the relations in a given syllogism, the validity or
invalidity of which must be established on independent grounds.
What, then, are we to make of Kant’s use of the circle notation?
My hunch is that, when coupled with his conception of logical formality,
the same notation now has a different meaning – to the point where the
circles will be totally dislodged from the project of logical calculus.
To flesh out this hypothesis, it will be instructive to begin with a brief
account of Kant’s notion of logical formality. In the preface to the second-
edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant defines logic as “the science that
exhaustively presents and strictly proves nothing but the formal rules of all
thinking (whether it be a priori or empirical, whatever origin or object it
may have, and whatever contingent or natural obstacles it may encounter in
our minds).” This definition, together with the ensuing clarification that
logic abstracts “from all objects of cognition and all the distinctions
 
R , :; JL, :; see A/B. R , :; see A–/B–.

FS, :–.
 From Logical Calculus to Logical Formality
between them,” signals three aspects of logical formality as Kant construes
it. That is, logic is formal insofar as it abstracts (a) from the contingent
empirical conditions of the thinking subject, (b) from all differences among
the objects of thinking, and (c) from whether or how (viz., a priori or
empirically) our thoughts may refer (beziehen) to the objects.
Clause (c) captures Kant’s claim that formal logic treats thinking in
abstraction from all reference to objects. This is not to say that logic treats
thoughts as though they are nonintentional. The point, rather, is that logic
abstracts from the nature of their purported objects, and especially from
whether or how they may be given to us. Kant often presents such
abstraction as the setting aside of considerations about the matter of
cognition: “Logic is then a science of the form of understanding and reason
in general. Universal logic must abstract from all objects . . .; thus logic
exhibits the form, without being concerned with the matter (LW, ).”
This abstraction from the matter of cognition, in turn, is connected with
Kant’s view that logic “cannot be an organon of the sciences . . . because an
organon presupposes exact acquaintance with the sciences, their objects and
sources.” On the contrary, logic is none other than the “universal propae-
deutic to all use of the understanding and of reason in general” and, as such,
“may not go into the sciences and anticipate their matter.”
This account of logical formality gives us the precise framework within
which to analyze Kant’s adoption of the circle notation and to appreciate
its philosophical significance. Like Euler, Kant uses a circle to represent the
logical extension (Umfang) or sphere (sphaera) of a concept, which com-
prises the multitude of things to which it is applicable: “The multitude of
things [Dinge] that are contained under the concept is called the logical
sphaera of the concept . . . We understand by that . . . the circle of
application, a line that has in itself no breadth but nonetheless compre-
hends a great space” (LDW, :). Every concept treated in logic has a
logical extension simply by virtue of being a concept, for logic “deals only
with concept as concept,” that is, only in view of its “logical form,” which
lies in its being “common to many.” “The sphaera notionis means

Bviii–ix; see A–/B–. I discuss these aspects of Kant’s notion of logical formality in
Lu-Adler, Kant’s Conception of Logical Extension, ch. .

Throughout his logic corpus, Kant often speaks of “content,” “matter,” and “object” of cognition
without distinction and contrasts them equally with the form of cognition. See LDW, :; LB,
:; LV, :; R , :.

JL, :; see A/B.

LPö, :–. The form of a concept is its generality, i.e., its ability to represent what is common
to multiple objects (JL :; LV, :, ).
Huaping Lu-Adler 
actually the multitude of things [Dinge] that are comprehended under a
concept as a nota communis” (LB, :; see LPh, :).
If Ding in this context means object, then the logical extension of a
concept represented by a circle is the multitude of all the possible objects
falling under a given concept. Insofar as the concept is treated in view of
its generality, which is its essential logical character, its logical extension is
always a multitude (even if, in reality, no object falls under the concept,
so that it is empty in terms of real extension).
When two concepts in a (categorical) judgment are treated in exten-
sional terms, the logical form of the judgment can be interpreted as a
relation between the concepts in respect of their logical extensions.
If the sphere of the subject is entirely contained in the notion of the
predicate or is considered entirely outside it, then it is a universal affirmative
judgment in the first case and a universal negative judgment in the last
case . . .
If the sphere of the subject partly falls in that of the predicate, and partly
does not, then it is particular judgment . . .
With all judgments I compare nothing other than the spheres of con-
cepts and see whether one is contained in the other or not. (LPh, :)
Using two distinct circles to signify the logical extensions of both the
subject and the predicate of a judgment, Kant can then represent the four
basic forms of categorical judgments by four possible arrangements of two
encircled spaces in relation to each other (Figures .a–.d). The relations
are described in such terms as “partly” versus “entirely” and “in” versus
“outside.”
On the surface, this use of circles resembles Euler’s. There is a funda-
mental difference between the two, however, which comes down to how
the objects that constitute the extension of a concept are construed.
When Euler uses circles to represent general notions in judgments and
inferences, and thereby treats each notion as applicable to an infinite
number of individual objects, the objects are assumed, to borrow the
familiar Kantian terminology, as what can in principle be given to us in
experience. General notions supposedly differ from “sensible ideas,
which represent to us objects really existing” (i.e., objects as are immedi-
ately present to our senses), and thereby allow us to talk about objects
without having any particular objects in mind. For those notions are
formed by abstraction, which “takes place when the soul fixes its

I defend this objectual reading of Kant’s logical extension in Lu-Adler, Logical Extension, ch. .

Letter C, pp. –.
 From Logical Calculus to Logical Formality
attention on only one quantity or quality of the object, and considers it
separately, as if it were no longer attached to the object.” Sense
perceptions of actual particulars are still the ultimate source of general
notions, however. To that extent, in terms of denotation, these notions
do not go beyond the realm of reality or existing individuals. Here is how
Euler puts the point:
With respect to general notions, every existing object, comprehended
under one, is denominated an individual, and the general idea, say that
of the cherry-tree, is denominated species or genus . . . Thus the notion of a
tree may be considered a genus, as it includes the notions of pear-trees,
apple-trees, oaks, fire, and so on, which are species; and of so many others,
each of which contains a great number of existing individuals. (Letter C,
p. )
Hence, if William Hamilton is right to characterize Euler’s circles as means
for “sensualizing . . . the abstractions of logic,” for Euler they are also
means of representing reality. This representational character of the circle
notation presumably underlay his confidence that the logical calculus
constructed with the notation could serve for the discovery of all truths.
In that connection, the abstractions sensualized by circles are meant only
to ensure the greatest generality of what they represent. Such abstractions
may be called “empirical abstractions,” as they merely set aside particular-
ities of the objects as we experience them.
Prima facie, Kant has a similar sense of abstraction in mind when
he explains how logic, dealing with the mere form of cognitions (including
concepts), addresses the question: “Which acts of the understanding con-
stitute a concept? or what is the same, Which are involved in the generation
of a concept out of given representations?” On his account, a concept as to
its form qua general representation is “always made” and is “grounded
on the spontaneity of thinking,” i.e., on the capacity of the understanding
to “transform” given representations into concepts. Abstraction is among
the “logical actus of the understanding” that constitute “the essential and
universal conditions for the generation of every concept whatsoever
[as regards its form].” Kant mostly uses empirical concepts (such as tree)
to illustrate this account of the “logical origin” of concepts.
This account, however, does not require that the representations over
which the logical act of abstraction is exercised be traceable to our sensible
representations of existing objects. Rather, as far as formal logic is
 
Ibid., p. . Hamilton, Lectures on Logic, vol. , p. .

JL, :–; see A/B; A/B; LPö, :; LV, :–.
Huaping Lu-Adler 
concerned, it “expects that representations will be given to it from else-
where, whatever this may be.” This abstraction from the source of
representations separates the so-called general logic from transcendental
logic: if the latter treats our cognition only insofar as it is related to objects
a priori, the former “abstracts . . . from any relation [Beziehung] of it to the
object.”
[General logic] considers representations, whether they are originally given
a priori in ourselves or only empirically, merely in respect of the laws
according to which the understanding brings them into relation to one
another when it thinks, and therefore it deals only with the form of the
understanding, which can be given to the representations wherever they
may have originated. (A/B)
This abstraction from the origin of representations corresponds to the third
aspect of Kant’s notion of logical formality mentioned previously: (general)
logic is formal in that it treats thoughts in abstraction from whether or how
they relate to their purported objects. Here we have a kind of transcendental
abstraction, namely abstraction from whether our thoughts are related to
any possible objects of experience at all. The result of this abstraction is
what Kant calls “the concept of an object in general [überhaupt]” (x), which
is the “highest concept of the whole human cognition” independent of
whether the object conceived is possible or impossible.
In that connection, if Kant uses circles to represent the logical exten-
sions of concepts in judgments and inferences, with the extension of each
concept comprising the objects falling under it, he means by “object”
merely an object in general = x, which signifies the same general-logical
realm for all concepts. It is in terms of this notion of object that Kant
characterizes the logical schema of every judgment:
[A]n object is only a something in general [ein Etwas überhaupt]
that we think through certain predicates that constitute its concept.
In every judgment, accordingly, there are two predicates that we com-
pare with one another, of which one [a], which comprises the given
cognition of the object [x], is called the logical subject, and the other [b],
which is to be compared with the first, is called the logical predicate.
(R , :)
The described schematic relation between two concepts in a judgment is
captured by Figure :
 
A/B, my emphasis. ML, :; see A/B; MMr, :; MVi, :–.

See R , :–; R , :–; R , :–.
 From Logical Calculus to Logical Formality
Figure . Relation between two concepts in a judgment.
Here, the squares b and a represent the logical subject and predicate of
the judgment, respectively, and the letter x marks whatever object lies
within the logical extension of the subject.
By thus interpreting the general-logical realm of objects in terms of the
object in general =x, Kant has limited the meaning and utility of the circle
notation. In sum, as circles are used in formal logic, they serve simply as
means to sensualize the abstraction of logic in its highest form, represent-
ing concepts independent of whether or how they may refer to the objects
of possible experience. To the extent that such references alone could give
real meaning to our concepts and the judgments and inferences composed
from them, the circles that represent abstractions from such references
are entirely detached from the project of logical calculus for discovering
(material) truths.
. Conclusion
Now let us return to Venn’s conjecture that the lack of progress in
mathematical logic between Lambert and Boole was due to Kant’s “disas-
trous effect on logical method.” Kant’s philosophical reflections on the
nature of logic might very well have had the alleged effect. In general, I find
it extremely hard, if not entirely unproductive, to speculate about historical
consequences of a philosophical theory. Nonetheless, if my contextualized
account of what he did with Euler’s circles is on the right track, it suggests
that Kant’s aim was not so much to discourage his audience from develop-
ing suitable mathematical devices for logical use altogether as to clarify
what, exactly, such devices could be used to achieve. Without such clarifi-
cation, he might add, all efforts at introducing mathematical notations into
logic would be blind if not a complete waste of time.

R , :; JL, :.

The circle notation may still be useful for uncovering what I call “formal truths” (of Kantian analytic
judgments). See Lu-Adler, “The Objects and the Formal Truth of Kantian Analytic Judgments.”
Huaping Lu-Adler 
As his adoption of the circle notation indicates, Kant is open to using
mathematical notations to represent the relations of concepts in judgments
and inferences – but only after having peeled off, so to speak, the features
once attached to those notations as part of the Leibnizian logical calculus.
That is, we may utilize mathematical notations in logic so long as we do
not thereby assume that all our complex thoughts can be fully analyzed
and symbolized by means of a universal characteristic or that we
can employ a logical calculus to discover previously unknown truths (in
the material sense). We may think more precisely with the help of math-
ematical notations, but such increased precision amounts only to a formal
improvement – as opposed to a material extension – of our cognition.
As for Euler, I ascribe to him a modest version of logical calculus. In his
view, to the extent that a judgment can be derived as the conclusion of a
syllogism with two known premises, we can reveal its truth by using circles
to represent all the involved concepts – more precisely, to represent the
objects signified thereby – and then computing their relations in accord-
ance with the basic principles governing the containment relations among
encircled spaces. If Euler deemed this “the only method of discovering
unknown truths,” Kant could agree with him, as long as “unknown truths”
meant truths of which previously we were not clearly aware. But this caveat
would only reinforce Kant’s point that by a logical calculus we can at best
increase the formal perfection of our cognition, without thereby learning
anything new in the material sense.
Kant thus brings home the view that the means provided by formal logic
at best help us express and somehow order what we already know.
No matter how much mathematical notation may enhance the precision
of this function of formal logic, it does not change the fact that no truths
can be proven strictly by means of that notation. One would have misun-
derstood Kant, however, to infer from this claim a total resistance to the
use of mathematical tools in formal logic. The claim is, rather, a cautionary
note against misuse of such tools to do what they cannot do, namely to
discover new truths.

Kant sometimes uses such notations as + to represent the relation between the logical subject and
predicate in an analytic judgment: “An example of an analytic proposition is, To everything x, to which
the concept of body (a + b) belongs, belongs also extension (b)” (JL, :). If this symbolization of the
concepts “body” and “extension” helps us to see more clearly their intensional containment relation,
the relation itself is only expressed but not discovered by the symbolic means, since how we choose to
symbolize each concept already presupposes prior knowledge of its intensional content. For further
discussion, see Lu-Adler, “Objects and Formal Truth.”
 
Kant and Tetens on the Unity of the Self

Udo Thiel
There can be no doubt that Johann Nikolaus Tetens (–) was one
of Kant’s most important German philosophical contemporaries. His main
work, the huge and wide-ranging two-volume Philosophische Versuche über
die menschliche Natur und ihre Entwickelung (Philosophical Essays on Human
Nature and its Development) of , comprising a total of more than ,
pages in the original edition, made a significant impression on the philo-
sophical scene in the late eighteenth century. Although the work was
criticised in relation to many points of detail and from a variety of
perspectives, it was, on the whole, well received and reviewed extensively.
Kant, too, was impressed. Kant was critical of the work’s unsystematic
nature and style, and of aspects of its general approach; nevertheless, he
thought of Tetens as one of the leading philosophers of the day, identifying
him as one of the few thinkers of the time whom he could reasonably
expect not only to understand but also to be able and willing to pursue the
kind of project that he himself had developed in the Critique of Pure Reason.
Kant does not mention Tetens in any of his published writings, but he does
in various letters and notes. There is, for example, a letter to Marcus Herz
from , another letter to Herz from  and a letter to Garve from
, and there are Kant’s marginal notes in his copy of Tetens’s book and
other Reflexionen referring to Tetens.

Johann Nikolaus Tetens, Philosophische Versuche über die menschliche Natur und ihre Entwickelung, 
vols, edited with commentary by Udo Roth und Gideon Stiening. This work is cited here according
to volume and page number in the original edition of , also given in the Roth and Stiening
edition. Eric Watkins has translated selections from Versuche into English. See Watkins (ed. and
transl.), Kant’s ‘Critique of Pure Reason’: Background Source Materials, pp. –.

See Roth and Stiening, ‘Zur Einführung’, in Tetens’s Versuche, pp. xx–xxi.

Kant’s letters to Marcus Herz are from April  and May  (Corr, :, ), and the letter
to Garve is from  August  (Corr, :). Kant made marginal notes on pp.  and  in
vol.  of his copy of Tetens’s Versuche (R  and R , :). Kant distinguishes his own project
from that of Tetens in R  and R , :.

 Kant and Tetens on the Unity of the Self
It is plain that Tetens was of considerable importance to Kant. Manfred
Kuehn has argued that Tetens provided a crucial link between earlier
German empiricist thought such as Feder’s, on the one hand, and Kant’s,
on the other. As Kuehn states, it is Tetens’s philosophy ‘that makes clearer
than any other Kant’s connections with his contemporaries’. Indeed,
scholarly interest in Tetens seems to be inspired mainly by his obvious
relevance to Kant’s thought. There is comparatively little on Tetens’s
philosophy in its own right, although recently steps have been taken to
rectify this. A somewhat neglected aspect of his relation to Kant is the
impact that the early Kant, especially through the Dissertation of ,
had on the development of Tetens’s own thought. Yet most of the
literature on Tetens focuses only on the relevance of his Versuche to Kant’s
Critical philosophy. There is a considerable, if not a huge, amount of work
on various aspects of this relation, links between Tetens’s and Kant’s
teachings being discussed on a number of issues.
Indeed, it is not surprising that Kant became interested in Tetens while
working on the Critique of Pure Reason in the late s. It seems that
Tetens’s general project was very similar to Kant’s, at least in some
important respects. Both aimed, in different ways, at overcoming the
divide between what later came to be called ‘empiricism’ and ‘rationalism’.
Much of early scholarship on Tetens did not sufficiently recognise his
concern with this kind of project, however, as it saw him as a

Kuehn, Scottish Common Sense in Germany, –, p. . Kuehn provides a detailed account of
the influence the Scottish Common Sense philosophy had on Tetens. For other literature on
Tetens’s philosophy in general, see Sommer, Grundzüge einer Geschichte der deutschen Psychologie,
pp. –; Uebele, Johann Nicolaus Tetens nach seiner Gesamtentwicklung betrachtet; Beck, Early
German Philosophy, pp. –; Barnouw, ‘The Philosophical Achievement and Historical
Significance of Johann Nicolas Tetens’; Rappard, Psychology as Self-knowledge, pp. –; and
Hauser, Selbstbewußtsein und personale Identität, pp. –.

Kuehn, Scottish Common Sense, p. .

Stiening and Thiel (eds.), Johann Nikolaus Tetens (–).

Tetens refers to Kant’s Dissertation in several places, for example in Versuche I, pp. –, where he
examines the question of how the concepts of space and time are acquired. Corey Dyck has recently
dealt with this issue, arguing that Tetens not only identified problems with Kant’s early analyses, but
also offered his own solution, which in turn anticipated and might even have influenced Kant’s
thinking in the Critique of Pure Reason and after; cf. Dyck, ‘Tetens as a Reader of Kant’s Inaugural
Dissertation’.

For the general relationship between Kant’s and Tetens’s philosophies, see, for example, Sommer,
Grundzüge einer Geschichte der deutschen Psychologie, pp. –; Seidel, Tetens’ Einfluß auf die
Philosophie Kants; and Carl, Der schweigende Kant, pp. –. For more recent accounts of specific
aspects of the relationship, see, for example, Heßbrüggen-Walter, ‘Kant, Tetens und die Grundkraft der
Seele’; Krouglov, ‘Der Begriff transzendental bei J. N. Tetens’; Krouglov, ‘Tetens und die Deduktion
der Kategorien bei Kant’; Wunderlich, Kant und die Bewußtseinstheorien, pp. –; Stapleford, ‘Reid,
Tetens, and Kant on the External World’; and Dyck, Kant and Rational Psychology, pp. –.
Udo Thiel 
straightforward empiricist. And Kant, too, when distinguishing himself
from Tetens, singles out the empiricist aspects of Tetens’s philosophy.
Thus he says that ‘Tetens examines the concepts of pure reason merely
subjectively (human nature), I objectively. The former analysis is empir-
ical, the latter transcendental’ (R , :; see also R ). And the
label ‘the German Locke’, first used for Tetens by Karl Rosenkranz in
, remains popular, even though the appropriateness of this label has
been questioned in recent years.
It is true, however, that Tetens seems to commit himself to an empiri-
cist or observational approach to philosophical problems. In the preface to
the Versuche, he presents his work as a ‘psychological analysis of the soul’.
Explicitly appealing to Locke, he says that his method is observational.
The basis for his ‘psychological analysis’ is the modifications of the soul as
they are given through a ‘feeling of the self’ (Selbstgefühl). These are then
to be repeated and modified, and attention is to be given to their genesis.
The observations are to be compared and analysed so that the most basic
faculties and operations and their relations to each other can be dis-
covered. It is plain that Tetens was strongly influenced by the Göttingen
empiricist philosopher Johann Georg Heinrich Feder, whose very popular
textbook, Logik und Metaphysik (Logic and Metaphysics), first published in
, Tetens used for his lectures from the winter term of –.
Feder, in turn, was strongly influenced by British philosophy and later
criticised Kant’s philosophy from an empiricist standpoint.
Tetens’s aim is not a mere natural history of the mind, however. He aims
at going beyond a collection of observed facts or a mere description of the
operations of the soul and their connections, a mere ‘mental geography’, as
Hume put it. Rather, the descriptive account is only Tetens’s starting point;
his aim is to then discover principles which allow us to infer the causes of
mental operations in order ‘to establish something certain . . . about the
nature of the soul, as the subject of the observed operations’. In short,
 
See, for example, Stiening and Thiel, Johann Nikolaus Tetens, p. . Versuche I, p. iv.

‘Was die Methode betrifft, deren ich mich bedient habe, so halte ichs für nöthig, darüber zum voraus
mich zu erklären. Sie ist die beobachtende, die Lock bey dem Verstande, und unsere Psychologen in
der Erfahrungs-Seelenlehre befolgt haben. Die Modifikationen der Seele so nehmen, wie sie durch
das Selbstgefühl erkannt werden; diese sorgfältig wiederholt, und mit Abänderung der Umstände
gewahrnehmen, beobachten, ihre Entstehungsart und die Wirkungsgesetze der Kräfte, die sie
hervorbringen, bemerken; alsdenn die Beobachtungen vergleichen, auflösen und daraus die
einfachsten Vermögen und Wirkungsarten und deren Beziehungen aufeinander aufsuchen’
(Versuche I, pp. iii–iv). See also ibid., p. .

See Sellhoff, ‘Einleitung’, in Johann Nikolaus Tetens: Metaphysik, pp. xliv–xlix. As Sellhoff points out,
Feder refers to Tetens’s Versuche in later editions of Logik und Metaphysik (e.g., , §, p. ).

Versuche, I, p. iv.
 Kant and Tetens on the Unity of the Self
Tetens’s aim is to establish a metaphysics of the soul, but to do so on an
empirical basis. In order to achieve this aim, obviously, reasoning (Raison-
nement) is required in addition to observation. ‘In the last analysis’, Tetens
argues, ‘the reflections and inferences make the simple observations useful,
and without them we would touch merely the surface of things’. Tetens
would regard a mere mental geography as superficial, as he thinks that
philosophy should dig deeper, go beyond the surface of things. Elsewhere,
Tetens states explicitly that the observational approach is merely the first
step in his investigations and that rational ‘speculation’ (‘Spekulation aus
allgemeinen Gründen’) is required for philosophy. Like Leibniz in his
Nouveaux essais, he even states that one can learn from the ‘scholastics’
here. This sounds like a far cry from a ‘German Locke’. Clearly, there are
significant differences between Locke’s and Tetens’s projects.
To be sure, Locke, too, thinks that reason is just as important as
experience in formulating hypotheses about the nature of things that are
more probably true than other views. Importantly, however, unlike
Tetens, Locke does not think that experience and reason can make out
anything certain about the real nature of the soul (or the nature of matter).
Its ‘real essence’, as Locke would have said, remains unknown to us.
To describe Tetens’s project as straightforwardly empiricist, then, is mis-
leading to say the least. And yet, too often his arguments are said to be
problematic because they are inconsistent with his (alleged) ‘empiricism’.
It may well be that there are inconsistencies in Tetens’s account, but this
would not be because of any purely ‘empiricist’ project that he endorsed.
Also, his metaphysical conclusions may not be well warranted, or it may be
difficult to see how precisely his synthesis of rationalism and empiricism is
meant to work, but again, these are different points. Here we need to
emphasise his metaphysical aim and his attempt to reconcile empiricist and
rationalist strands of thought. Tetens was not a ‘German Locke’; rather,
like Kant, his project consisted in finding a way beyond the empiricism/
rationalism divide, even if his method and the results are very different,
indeed, from Kant’s.
Unlike much Tetens scholarship, Kant must have recognised that
Tetens pursued a project of that kind. Had he regarded Tetens as a mere
empiricist concerned with nothing but the ‘evolution of concepts’
(R , :), he would hardly have thought of him as one of the very

Ibid., p. xxx.

Johann Nikolaus Tetens, Ueber die allgemeine speculativische Philosophie, p. . See also pp. 
and .
Udo Thiel 
few thinkers of his day who would be able to ‘enlighten the world’ about
the project of a Critique of Pure Reason. The fact that Kant was very
disappointed when no such enlightening activity on Tetens’s part was
forthcoming is just a further indication of the high expectations and regard
Kant had for Tetens as a philosopher.
My focus in this paper is on an issue that seems to have been somewhat
neglected in the literature on Tetens and Kant. It is a central issue for both
thinkers, even if Tetens at least does not explicitly describe it as a central
topic. This is the notion of the unity of the self. My aim is not to show that
Tetens had said what Kant later said, only less precisely, but rather to
account for the notion of unity in both thinkers and highlight the
similarities and differences and thereby illuminate both thinkers’ accounts
and their relationship to one another.
. Tetens on Inner Sense, Consciousness and Selbstgefühl

In the comments cited above on his observational method, Tetens makes use
of the notion of a ‘feeling of the self’, or Selbstgefühl. It turns out that this
notion is of central importance to his overall project and to the issue of unity
in particular. What is this Selbstgefühl, and how is it related to notions such as
consciousness and apperception that Tetens also makes use of? The notion of
Selbstgefühl is somewhat uncommon in present-day philosophical debates,
though it was a popular term in late eighteenth-century writings on empirical
psychology and anthropology. It seems that Johann Bernhard Basedow had
introduced the term into the philosophical terminology in . Obvi-
ously, similar expressions, such as ‘inneres Gefühl’, had been used much
earlier, but ‘Selbstgefühl’ became popular when Feder took over the term
from Basedow in his influential Logik und Metaphysik, mentioned earlier as a
textbook that Tetens used for his lectures. Very probably, then, Tetens
adopted this term from Feder. It is not easy, however, to determine the
exact meaning of ‘Selbstgefühl’, as it was used in several different ways
by a variety of thinkers. Here, we focus on Tetens.

Letter to Herz, May  (Corr, :). See also the letter to Garve,  August  (Corr,
:).

Johann Bernhard Basedow, Philalethie, vol. , §.

See, for example, Georg Friedrich Meier, Metaphysik, vol. III, pp.  and .

Feder, Logik und Metaphysik (), pp.  and f.

For a detailed account of the notion of Selbstgefühl in eighteenth-century thought, see Thiel,
‘Varieties of Inner Sense’, and for a discussion of Tetens, see Thiel, ‘Zwischen Empirischer
Psychologie und Rationaler Seelenlehre’.
 Kant and Tetens on the Unity of the Self
Tetens seems to connect Selbstgefühl, considered as a faculty of the soul,
with inner sense. Selbstgefühl is ‘the feeling of any kind of inner states and
modifications considered in themselves, as they exist in us’. Inner sense is
conceived more broadly than Selbstgefühl, however, for the objects of inner
sense include ‘the relations of objects that are in us, such as the feeling of
identity and diversity’ as well as the feelings of the beautiful, the morally
good and the true. Selbstgefühl, then, considered as a faculty, is a kind of
inner sense but not identical with it. Tetens also distinguishes Selbstgefühl
from the consciousness of our own mental states, as it denotes the
immediately felt presence of mental states, in the sense of what is today
called a first-order model, according to which this feeling or awareness is an
essential and immanent feature of the mental states themselves. Conscious-
ness, by contrast, understood as a relating to our own mental states, is a
secondary act through which those states become conscious in the first
place. This is why Tetens argues that consciousness can relate only to past
states, not to the immediately present ones: ‘One is not conscious to
oneself that one is conscious of some object, [one is] not in the former
[state], that is, at the same moment at which one is the latter state. We do
not reflect on our own reflection at the same moment at which our
reflection is occupied with a particular object.’ That Tetens uses the
terminology of ‘reflection’ here to account for the consciousness of mental
states indicates that he thinks of the latter in terms of a second-order
model. In other contexts, however, he appears to account for consciousness
in terms of an immediate ‘feeling’, as we shall see below.
. Tetens on Apperception and the Consciousness of Objects

In accounting for apperception and the consciousness of objects, Tetens
seems to follow Christian Wolff rather than the tradition of Locke or
Hume, although he uses the terminology somewhat differently from
Wolff. In Tetens, ‘apperception’ does not stand for self-consciousness,
but for ‘Gewahrnehmen’, or awareness, and is closer to Wolff’s ‘Bewußtseyn’,
or consciousness. Like Wolff in his remarks on consciousness, Tetens
 
Versuche I, p. . Versuche I, p. .

On this latter point, see Wunderlich, Kant und die Bewußtseinstheorien, pp. f., and Thiel,
‘Zwischen Empirischer Psychologie und Rationaler Seelenlehre’, p. . For Wolff, see also Thiel,
The Early Modern Subject, pp. –. For a detailed discussion of Tetens’s notion of apperception
as Gewahrnehmen, see Kitcher, ‘Analyzing Apperception (Gewahrnehmen)’.

Thus Watkins translates Tetens’s Gewahrnehmen as ‘awareness’; cf. Watkins, Background Source
Materials, p. .
Udo Thiel 
accounts for apperception in terms of the notion of distinguishing between
things: ‘Being aware is a distinguishing.’ We apperceive an object when we
become aware of its distinctness from other objects; the function of apper-
ception is to distinguish objects from each other. As the act of distinguish-
ing is an activity of the power of thought, Tetens ascribes apperception to
thought (Denkkraft). The faculty of thought consists in cognizing ‘relations
among things’. For Tetens, then, apperception is an intellectual faculty.
Also, like Wolff (in regard to consciousness), he argues that attention and
reflection are necessary conditions of apperception, and that reflection is to
be understood in terms of comparing things or ideas of things. Tetens
points out that what he calls ‘Bemerken’ involves more than distinguishing
among objects; it picks out the characteristics of an object that can serve for
re-identifying it in the future.
The consciousness (‘Bewußtseyn’) of objects, however, is equivalent
neither to apperception nor to Bemerken. For Tetens, the consciousness
of objects does involve the act of distinguishing (and thus Gewahrnehmen,
or apperception). Consciousness of an object, however, is a mental state
in which one not only feels (through acts of distinguishing) the object or
its representation, but also one’s own self as the subject of these activities.
Consciousness in this context is a feeling that combines the feeling of the
object and the feeling of one’s own self. It involves an act of distinguish-
ing between the felt thing and one’s own self. This idea is also present
in Wolff. Wolff held that it is through our consciousness of objects that
we become conscious of ourselves as something that is distinct from the
objects of which we are conscious. Tetens, too, argues that relating
to objects and to one’s own self belong ‘inseparably’ together, as he puts
it. Without relating to objects, there could be no relating to one’s
own self.
   
Versuche I, p. . Ibid. Ibid., p. . Ibid., pp. –.

Ibid., p. .

‘Das Bemerken will etwas mehr sagen, als Gewahrnehmen. Wer etwas bemerket, suchet an der
wahrgenommenen Sache ein Merkmal auf, woran sie auch in der Folge gewahrgenommen und
ausgekannt werden könne’ (ibid., p. ).

‘Sich einer Sache bewußt seyn, drucket einen fortdaurenden Zustand aus, in welchem man einen
Gegenstand oder dessen Vorstellung unterscheidend fühlet, und sich selbst dazu. Das Bewußtseyn
ist von Einer Seite ein Gefühl, . . . mit dem ein Unterscheiden der gefühlten Sache und Seiner selbst
verbunden ist. Gefühl und Gewahrnhemung sind die beiden Bestandtheile des Bewußtseyns’
(ibid.).

See ibid., p. . Wolff does not merely say that the two concepts are inseparable, however, and
that we cannot relate to our own self without also relating to an object, but also that without
relating to our own self, we could not relate to objects. Thus he suggests a relation of mutual
dependence, though without explaining this idea in any detail (see Wolff, Deutsche Metaphysik,
 Kant and Tetens on the Unity of the Self
In the previous section, we noted that Selbstgefühl and being conscious
of one’s own mental states are two distinct ways of relating to one’s own
self for Tetens. In the present context, Tetens thinks of consciousness as a
complex feeling that involves Selbstgefühl but, again, is not identical with
it. Here, consciousness involves a feeling of the apperceived object and the
feeling of one’s own self. However, Tetens does not seem to elaborate on
the function Selbstgefühl is meant to fulfil for the consciousness of objects.
He does not explain why he thinks the feeling of self is involved in our
consciousness of objects.
. Tetens on the Unity of the Self and Selbstgefühl

What, precisely, is the object of Selbstgefühl? Tetens does not seem to be
clear on this. Sometimes, following Hume, he claims that only our mental
acts or ideas constitute the immediate objects of Selbstgefühl, and that the
notion of a subject or bearer of those mental operations is inferred. This is
implied by his definition of Selbstgefühl as a feeling of ‘inner modifications’
of the soul, i.e., not of the soul itself as the bearer of those modifications.
At other times, he seems to suggest that the self as an embodied soul is an
object of feeling. And against Hume, Tetens argues that Selbstgefühl even
leads to the notion of a strictly unitary and identical self and maintains that
Hume had simply ‘overlooked’ this fact. This can be maintained, Tetens
believes, by accepting no more as real than Hume does – that is to say, by
relating only to those items of which we are immediately conscious.
We feel, as Hume would concede, a multiplicity of perceptions; but,
Tetens maintains, we feel more than that. For whenever I feel a
§). Compare Thiel, ‘Zum Verhältnis von Gegenstandsbewußtsein und Selbstbewußtsein bei
Wolff und seinen Kritikern’; Thiel, The Early Modern Subject, pp. –; and Wunderlich, Kant
und die Bewußtseinstheorien, p. .

Note that Tetens does not equate Selbstgefühl with self-consciousness. In contrast to the former, the
latter is a mediated relating to one’s own self. Compare Versuche I, pp. –. For a discussion of
this, see Thiel, ‘Zwischen Empirischer Psychologie und Rationaler Seelenlehre’, pp. –, and
Wunderlich, Kant und die Bewußtseinstheorien, pp. –.

See again the passage from Versuche I, p. .

‘Die innern Modifikationen, deren Gefühl unser Selbstgefühl ausmachet’ (ibid., p. ). Compare
also ibid., II, p. .

See Versuche II, p. : ‘What is the object of my feeling when I feel myself and my actions? Pure
observation can only answer that I feel the self, the feeling, thinking, and willing whole which
consists of a body and a simple soul, the embodied soul.’ Compare also: ‘Es ist der Mensch, der von
dem Menschen gefühlet wird’ (ibid., p. ).

‘The matter is not as Mr. Hume says it is, and one can assert this without assuming that something
more is actually present than what he himself recognises, namely, only as much as we are aware of
immediately. But Mr. Hume overlooked one important circumstance. I feel one representation, and
Udo Thiel 
perception, I am also conscious, he holds, that this feeling is part of a
‘larger’ and ‘stronger’ but ‘obscure’ feeling of a ‘ground’ (Grund) of my
perceptions, which remains the same in all changes of perceptions. This is
Tetens’s notion of an ‘obscure ground’, or core, of all our perceptions.
Tetens argues:
As often as I have an impression of, am aware of, or become immediately
conscious of a representation I am to that extent also conscious that this
feeling of my modification is only a prominent aspect of a much larger, more
extensive, stronger feeling, though one that is, in its other parts, obscure or at
least less clear. And I am just as conscious of this latter [feeling] and in the
same way that I can always be with respect to each individual feature of
which I become aware, in the same way, namely, that one can ever become
immediately conscious of something. Thus I have such an impression that
carries me to the thought that a thing and a feature in this thing is present, in
the very same way that I can arrive at this thought according to Mr. Hume’s
own explanation: a feature is actual. And in this whole impression the obscure
[back]ground for it is always the same, if I am aware of one aspect of it as
presently actual in me instead of another that has faded away. This [back]
ground for the whole impression . . . is the same throughout all of the
particular changes that occur in the impression and the representation.
Tetens’s statements about the feeling relating to an ‘obscure ground’ as a
‘larger’ and ‘stronger’ but ‘less clear’ feeling that is part of any particular
perception we feel are left unexplained, however. In the end, it remains
unclear whether Tetens wants to say that we are directly conscious of this
‘obscure ground’ or that it is suggested to us somehow by the immediate
consciousness or feeling of particular perceptions.
Still, for Tetens it follows from this observation that the self is not a
mere collection of a multiplicity of ideas that the imagination may then
combine into some fictional unity. Rather, there is a natural and real unity
of the self. This is why we have the idea of one subject with many
modifications. Tetens argues that it is a consequence of his observation
about the ‘obscure ground’,
another, also an activity of thinking, an expression of the will, etc., and these impressions are
different and actual. But I have even more impressions’ (Versuche I, p. ; the translation of this
passage is from Watkins, Background Source Materials, p. ).

Versuche I, pp. –. The translation of this passage is from Watkins, Background Source Materials,
p. .

Compare Baumgarten, who calls the totality of our obscure perceptions the ‘ground of the soul’
(fundus animae; Grund der Seele). Baumgarten, Metaphysica, §. For this issue, see also Frank,
Selbstgefühl, pp. –.

See also Versuche I, p. : ‘Begleitet nicht ein gewisses dunkles Selbstgefühl alle unsere Zustände,
Beschaffenheiten und Veränderungen von der leidentlichen Gattung?’
 Kant and Tetens on the Unity of the Self
that the idea or representation of my I is not a collection of individual
representations that our imagination might have turned into a whole just
like it unifies the individual representations of soldiers into a representation
of one regiment. That unification lies in the impression itself, in nature, and
not in a combination that it makes itself. For this reason a representation of
one subject with different features arises, that is, a representation that imme-
diately arises from the impression, must be thought in this way and turned
into an idea such that the common human understanding actually does
form it in this way.
. Tetens on the Unity of the Self as Appearance and as Substance

It was a common view in eighteenth-century philosophy that the soul, as a
simple substance, is the object of an immediate feeling. In some passages at
least, Tetens, too, seems to hold this view. Obviously, however, it is highly
problematic to assert that we simply ‘feel’ that the soul is such an entity.
Elsewhere, Tetens argues more cautiously, suggesting that he is aware of
the problematic nature of this claim and is attempting to remain meta-
physically neutral as to the object of Selbstgefühl. In this context, it is
important to highlight a distinction Tetens draws between two ways of
thinking about the self. He distinguishes between the soul in a psycho-
logical sense (‘im psychologischen Verstande’) and in a metaphysical sense
(‘im metaphysischen Verstande’). The latter is not an object of Selbstgefühl,
but of ‘theoretical speculation’, and is thought of as an incorporeal sub-
stance. This, as we shall see, is relevant to the issue of unity. The
human self or soul, considered in a psychological sense, is that self that we
feel directly through Selbstgefühl. Regarding the psychological self, it does
not matter, Tetens seems to hold, if the soul consists solely of a simple
immaterial essence, of such an immaterial essence in combination with an
inner corporeal instrument of feeling and thought, or of only an ‘inner
organised body’. Tetens suggests that we need to distinguish between
what is accessible to Selbstgefühl and the ontological ground of the empir-
ical or ‘psychological’ self. The real essence, as Locke would have put it, of

Ibid., p. . The translation of this passage is from Watkins, Background Source Materials,
pp. –.

Versuche I, pp. –.

For a general account of Kant’s and empiricists’ conception of unity, see Thiel, ‘Unities of the Self:
From Kant to Locke’.

‘Die menschliche Seele im psychologischen Verstande genommen, ist das Ich, das wir mit unserm
Selbstgefühl empfinden und beobachten können . . . Genug es ist das fühlende, denkende und
wollende Eins, der innere Mensch selbst’ (Versuche I, p. ).

Ibid.
Udo Thiel 
the self or soul may be of this or that nature, but whatever it is, it is not an
object of Selbstgefühl and thus not relevant to the self in an empirical or
psychological sense. Strictly speaking, for Tetens, the soul ‘in a psycho-
logical sense’ is mere appearance (‘Schein’): our immediate awareness of
the self does not allow us to consider it as anything else but appearance.
As his critique of Hume suggests, however, for Tetens there is unity at the
level of inner consciousness and observation. He speaks explicitly of an
‘observed unity of the self’. Our very Selbstgefühl, Tetens holds, indicates
that the self is more than a play of fibres in the brain; it is a unitary entity,
not a ‘heap of several things’. Tetens thinks it is a matter of observation
that the self that sees is the same as that which tastes, thinks, wills, etc.;
there is one unitary entity involved in all mental operations. Of course,
this notion of an empirical unity of the self raises questions: Is this unity
really an object of mere observation or feeling, as Tetens maintains? Do we
feel this unity, or do we feel only the various inner modifications, as Hume
would have objected to Tetens’s thesis? In short, is Tetens’s alleged
‘observed unity’ perhaps merely an asserted unity and not a matter of
experience at all? Further, even if we assumed with Tetens that there is a
feeling of unity, such a feeling could deceive us. We may think, on the
basis of inner experience or feeling, that we are unitary beings, without
in fact being unitary at all. Tetens would probably have argued that such a
feeling, if it exists, cannot be illusory, but indicates the existence of a real
unity. If there were no real unity, the feeling of unity would disappear.
Tetens maintains, moreover, that the appearances of Selbstgefühl relate
indirectly to the qualities and powers of the soul in a metaphysical sense, to

‘Was endlich die Natur unsers Selbstgefühls und der Vorstellungen betrifft, die wir von unsern
eigenen Wirkungen haben, so können sie . . . nichts mehr als Schein seyn; so wie die unmittelbare
Beobachtung uns auch nicht berechtiget, sie für etwas mehr anzusehen . . . Denn wir empfinden die
Aktus unsers Gefühls, und des Denkens, und des Wollens nur in ihren Wirkungen, das ist, in den
Veränderungen und Folgen, die davon in dem gesammten Seelenwesen, das ist, in einem
zusammengesetzten Wesen abhangen’ (Versuche II, p. ).
 
Ibid., p. . Ibid., pp.  and .

Ibid., p. . Tetens does not deal in any detail with the issue of diachronic personal identity.
Although he holds that our very Selbstgefühl leads to the notion of an identical self or ‘obscure
ground’ underlying our perceptions, he is not saying that our identity through time is known to us
through a direct feeling. Rather, he argues that the concept of the identity of the self is derived from
comparing the present feeling of one’s own self, as a subject with certain characteristics, with a
similar past feeling that is being reproduced. (‘Daher der Begrif von der Identität unsers Ichs, aus der
Vergleichung eines gegenwärtigen Gefühls von unserm Ich, als einem Subjekt mit seiner in ihm
vorhandenen Beschaffenheit mit einem ähnlichen vergangenen Gefühl, welches reproduciret wird,’
Versuche I, p. .) Note that Tetens comments here on the way in which we develop the concept
of our own identity. He does not seem to explain how the diachronic identity of the self is
constituted. Rather, he seems to take diachronic identity for granted.

Versuche II, p. .
 Kant and Tetens on the Unity of the Self
which he refers as the ‘simple self’. The soul in this sense is a ‘simple
entity, distinct from the organised body’, an immaterial substance.
Tetens accounts for the self in a metaphysical sense in terms of a ‘substan-
tial unity of the soul’. But how, according to Tetens, do we arrive at the
notion of a metaphysical and substantial unity? His critique of Hume’s
bundle account of the mind suggests that the simple, incorporeal self is
itself an object of inner experience and is part of that totality that we feel
when we are conscious of ‘inner modifications’. Elsewhere, however,
Tetens argues that immediate experience merely ‘suggests’ the notion of
an incorporeal self or, more strongly, that we are ‘forced’ to come up with
this notion from immediate experience. Clearly, if experience merely
suggests the idea of unity, then this idea is not an object of direct experi-
ence or Selbstgefühl. Moreover, Tetens seems to be saying in another
passage that ‘theoretical speculation about the nature of the soul’ is
required in order to arrive at the idea of a substantial unity.
Indeed, Tetens seems to argue for the idea of a unitary soul by way
of reflecting on the conditions of experience and thought in general.
This argument appears in the context of his attempt to answer his own
question about how we arrive at the notion of a substantial unity.
Again, if the substantial unity has to be inferred, then it is not immedi-
ately given in experience or Selbstgefühl. Clearly, as we shall see, Tetens
employs a method that goes well beyond the empiricist strands of his
thought.
Tetens’s first step in answering his question about substantial unity is to
show that in order to have representations of external objects, an activity of
judging or forming propositions is required, and that in order to be able to
do the latter, an activity of distinguishing between the external thing, the
representation, and one’s own self is required. Tetens does not mention
the notion of substantial unity here, but he introduces a notion of a self
that is not an object of feeling or experience. Rather, it is the notion of
something that we have to think in order to be able to explain representa-
tions of external objects. Without such a notion of the self, as distinct from

‘Erscheinungen . . ., die sich . . . mittelbar auf die Beschaffenheiten, Kräfte und Vermögen des
einfachen Ichs beziehen’ (ibid., pp. –).
   
Versuche I, p. . Versuche II, p. . Ibid., p. . Versuche I, p. .

‘Mit allen Vorstellungen des Gesichts, des Gefühls und der übrigen Sinne wird der Gedanke
verbunden, dass sie äußere Objekte vorstellen. Dieser Gedanke bestehet in einem Urtheil, und
setzet voraus, dass schon eine allgemeine Vorstellung von einem Dinge, von einem wirklichen
Dinge, und von einem äußern Dinge, vorhanden, und dass diese von einer andern allgemeinen
Vorstellung von unserm Selbst, und von einer Sache in uns, unterschieden sey’ (ibid., p. ).
Udo Thiel 
the representation of other things, the possibility of forming propositions
about the existence of external things could not even be entertained.
This notion is a requirement of thought.
Next, Tetens attempts to show that the required notion of the self is
that of a unitary substance or a ‘substantial unity’. Without such a unity,
the operations of the soul would not be possible. He argues that ‘the
collective powers and operations presuppose a substantial unity in which
the collection is performed and with respect to which they are only such
powers and operations as they are’. Even individual operations presup-
pose such a unity, Tetens argues. Such operations consist of a multitude of
elements. These elements can become one single act only if they belong to
a substantial unity. He argues, further, that the very act of forming
a judgement or proposition presupposes the unity of the self. In order to
form even the most basic proposition, we need to combine subject,
predicate and the relation between the two. This combination would not
be possible if there were no unitary self to which these various thoughts
belonged.
In sum, there are three notions of the unity of the self in Tetens. First,
there is the empirical, observed or observable unity relating to the self in a
psychological sense, a unity that is simply a fact of consciousness or inner
experience. Second, as Tetens obviously thinks that the observed unity of
the psychological self is not sufficient, there is the idea of substantial unity
that relates to the self in the metaphysical sense, understood as an imma-
terial entity. Rational reflection, rather than merely feeling and observa-
tion, is required to arrive at the notion of a substantial unity. As we saw,
one reflection that is relevant here is that the nature of having representa-
tions or mental activity leads, third, to the idea of unitary self as a necessary
condition of such activity. Importantly, for Tetens, the notion of the unity
of the self as a necessary condition of mental activity collapses into the
second, the substantial unity. For Tetens, the unity of the self as a
necessary condition of mental activity can be none other than the unity
of the soul as a substance, the self in a metaphysical sense.

Versuche II, p. .

‘Denn wenn die verschiedenen Bestandtheile des Aktus durch mehrere verschiedene Wesen vertheilet
sind, davon jedes einzeln, nur einen einzelnen von jenen Aktus hervorbringet: so ist zwar ein Haufen
von Elementen des Gefühls in mehrern Dingen vertheilt vorhanden; aber nirgends ist ein Gefühl,
nirgends das vereinigte Ganze aus ihnen, das nach der Voraussetzung, heterogen von seinen
Elementen, erst ein Gefühl wird, wenn jene Elemente zusammen genommen werden’ (ibid., p. ).

Ibid., p. .

‘So zeiget sich unmittelbar aus den Beobachtungen eine gewisse Einheit unsers Ichs’ (ibid., p. ).
 Kant and Tetens on the Unity of the Self
. Tetens’s Conceptions of Unity and Kant

Like Tetens, Kant distinguishes between three conceptions of the unity of
the self, if in a very different systematic context. Kant distinguishes
between what he calls the psychological or empirical, the logical or
transcendental and the noumenal self. There seem to be some significant
similarities between Tetens’s and Kant’s distinctions. Thus Tetens’s dis-
tinction between the self in a psychological sense and the self in a
metaphysical sense may be seen as corresponding to Kant’s distinction
between the psychological self and the noumenal self, and Tetens’s notion
of unity as a necessary condition of mental activity as corresponding to the
transcendental unity of apperception in Kant. On the other hand, the
three conceptions and their relationships to one another are not equivalent
in Kant and Tetens. Let us look, first, at Kant’s notion of the empirical or
psychological self in comparison with Tetens’s notion of the soul in a
psychological sense.
Kant argues that unity is required for thought and cognition to be
possible. This leads to his notion of the transcendental unity of appercep-
tion in the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories. In order to
introduce and clarify this notion, he contrasts it with empirical appercep-
tion, or inner sense. Empirical consciousness of oneself, or apperception, is
the actual awareness of particular mental states. Kant says that empirical
apperception ‘accompanies different representations’. This means that it ‘is
by itself dispersed’ (B): ‘The consciousness of oneself in accordance
with the determinations of our state in internal perception is merely
empirical, forever variable; it can provide no standing or abiding self in
this stream of inner appearances, and is customarily called inner sense, or
empirical apperception (A)’, Inner sense, or empirical apperception,
does not provide us with the notion of a unitary self or subject, because
‘all the determining grounds of my existence that can be encountered in
me are representations’ (Bxxxix). I do not encounter a unitary self beyond
the representations. Rather, ‘in that which we call the soul, everything is in
continual flux’, and inner sense ‘gives cognition only of a change of
determinations’ (A). Empirical apperception, then, is just a conscious-
ness accompanying different perceptions and is, for that reason, ‘forever
variable’ (A).

Kant distinguishes between the self of empirical apperception or inner sense and the self of pure
apperception in terms of the notion of the ‘psychological self’ and the ‘logical self’ in RP, :.

See also Anth, :.
Udo Thiel 
In contrast to Tetens, then, for Kant there is no ‘observed unity’ of the
psychological self based on inner sense alone. The psychological self,
rather, is ‘by itself dispersed’. In terms of the psychological self, Kant
appears to side with Hume rather than Tetens. Like Hume, he holds that
direct inner experience provides no evidence for a unitary self; we encoun-
ter only perceptions or representations. For Kant, Hume is right in arguing
that we cannot find an impression of a self among the perceptions of inner
sense. Inner sense, on its own, acquaints us only with constantly changing
perceptions, but not with a unitary and identical self.
Second, how does Tetens’s idea of a unitary self as a necessary condition
of mental activity compare with Kant’s doctrine of the transcendental
unity of apperception? This question is directly linked to the third ques-
tion: How does Tetens’s account of substantial unity of the self in a
metaphysical sense compare with Kant’s reflections on the unity of the
self in the noumenal sense?
Although Kant agrees with Hume in terms of the psychological self, he
thinks that Hume is mistaken in his view that all we can learn about the
unity of the self has to be derived from experience. Thinking consists
in combining representations, and this combination would not be possible
without a prior unity. ‘The concept of combination . . . carries with it
the concept of the unity of the manifold’ (B). Representations a and b
could not be combined if they did not belong to one and the same
consciousness or the same I. ‘The representation of this unity . . . first
makes the concept of combination possible’ (B). Kant speaks, therefore,
of a ‘necessary unity of apperception’ (B) as a condition of ‘thinking in
general’ (B). Moreover, as combination is not ‘given through objects’,
‘but can be executed only by the subject itself’ and is an ‘act of its self-
activity’ (B), it ‘cannot be regarded as belonging to sensibility’ (B).
That is why this unity needs to be distinguished from empirical appercep-
tion, is called ‘pure apperception’ and belongs to the understanding. The
I in the proposition I think is a ‘purely intellectual’ representation precisely
because it necessarily ‘occurs in all thinking’ (B). For that reason, it is
logically prior to the latter; it ‘precedes a priori all my determinate thinking’
(B). That is what Kant means when he says that the I of pure
apperception is only of ‘logical significance’ (A).
Kant emphasises that the distinction between the ‘psychological self’
and the ‘logical self’ of pure apperception (RP, :) must not be
understood in terms of an ontological distinction between two distinct
beings. He states: that ‘I am conscious of myself is a thought that contains
a twofold self, the self as subject, and the self as object’ (RP, :),
 Kant and Tetens on the Unity of the Self
but he insists that this does not mean that there are ‘two subjects in one
person’ (RP, :); rather, the self as thinking subject and the self as a
sensory being are ‘one and the same subject’ (Anth, :). The distinc-
tion between the two is one concerning two ways of relating to the self or
of becoming conscious of oneself, the self as a subject of thought and the
self as an object of possible experience.
Kant characterises the I of pure apperception or the logical subject of
thinking as ‘simple’ (B, B, B, B). This means that in all
thought it ‘is a single thing that cannot be resolved into a plurality of
subjects’ (B). The I of apperception must be one, because otherwise
a multiplicity of representations could not be combined into the unity of a
thought. Moreover, simplicity here means that the I of pure apperception
is empty of content (B). And this, in turn, means that through the I of
pure apperception (in contrast to the psychological self), ‘nothing manifold
is given’ (B). Kant explains the simplicity of the logical subject in terms
of logical unity. ‘I am simple signifies no more than that this representation
I encompasses not the least manifoldness within itself, and that it is an
absolute (though merely logical) unity’ (A; compare A).
We saw that for Tetens, too, the unity of the self is a necessary condition
of mental activity, that is, of cognition. Tetens’s account of the unity of the
self as a necessary condition of mental activity is not, however, transcen-
dental in Kant’s sense of the term, but ‘transcendent’. We saw that for
Tetens, the notion of unity as a necessary condition of thought and
cognition collapses into that of a substantial unity of the self in a
metaphysical sense. For him, the unity of the self as a necessary condition
of thought is to be accounted for in terms of the unity of the soul as a
substance. Kant would reject this, of course. Indeed, some of Kant’s
arguments against rational psychology would apply to Tetens’s position.
Like rational psychology, Tetens’s account of the soul in the metaphysical
sense makes knowledge claims about the self beyond possible experience,

‘Es wird dadurch aber nicht eine doppelte Persönlichkeit gemeynt, sondern nur Ich, der ich denke
und anschaue, ist die Person, das Ich aber des Objectes, was von mir angeschauet wird, ist gleich
anderen Gegenständen außer mir, die Sache’ (RP, :). Compare the distinction in the
Anthropology between ‘the self as the subject of thought’ (Anth, :), also referred to as ‘the
self of reflection’ (Anth, :), and ‘the self as the object . . . of inner sense’ (Anth, :), also
referred to as ‘the self of apprehension’ (Anth, :).

Beck suggests that Tetens’s Selbstgefühl can be linked to Kant’s unity of apperception, but this seems
implausible, as the former, unlike the latter, is empirical and relates to the soul in a psychological
sense; see Beck, Early German Philosophy, p. .

For Tetens’s use of the term ‘transcendental’, see Krouglov, ‘Der Begriff “transzendental” bei J. N.
Tetens’.
Udo Thiel 
thus moving ‘beyond the sensible world, entering into the field of
noumena’ (B–). Kant would argue that, like the rational psycholo-
gists, Tetens illicitly infers the substantiality and simplicity of the soul from
what Kant calls the I of apperception, or the ‘constant logical subject of
thinking’ (A). Tetens’s error is that he takes the logical unity of
consciousness ‘for an intuition of the subject as an object’ and applies
‘the category of substance . . . to it’ (B). In terms of the rationalist claim
about simplicity that Tetens seems to adopt, Kant argues that here an
analytic truth about logical simplicity is misread as a synthetic truth about
the simple nature of the self as substance (B). As Kant points out,
‘the simplicity of consciousness is . . . no acquaintance with the simple
nature of our subject’ (A).
In contrast to Tetens, then, Kant keeps the idea of unity as a formal
condition of thought and cognition distinct from the notion of substantial
unity. The latter cannot be derived from the former. We are acquainted
with the unity of consciousness ‘only because we have an indispensable
need of it for the possibility of experience’ (B). Still, in spite of such
significant differences, as Kant was studying the psychology of the day
in the late s, it may well be that Tetens’s account of the unity of the
self played a role in the development of his own ideas on this issue.
However, while Tetens aimed at developing a metaphysics of the soul on
an empirical basis, attempting to combine ‘empiricism’ and ‘rationalism’
in this way, Kant argued against both empiricist and rationalist accounts in
showing that neither experience nor pure reason could function as the
basis of a rationalist metaphysics of the soul.

On this topic, see Winter, ‘Seele als Problem in der Transzendentalphilosophie Kants’, especially
p. .
 
G. F. Meier and Kant on the Belief

in the Immortality of the Soul
Corey W. Dyck
It is widely acknowledged that Georg Friedrich Meier (–) exercised

an important influence on Kant’s views on logic. As is well known, Meier’s
textbooks on logic, the full Vernunftlehre (Doctrine of Reason) of  and
the much-truncated Auszug aus der Vernunftlehre (Excerpt from the Doctrine
of Reason) of the same year, were the basis for Kant’s lectures on the topic
consistently from  through to . Of course, Kant no more took
Meier’s word for matters pertaining to the laws of thought than he
took Baumgarten’s for matters concerning metaphysics, though scholars
have recently argued that, in addition to retaining the form of Meier’s
presentation, Kant can also be seen to take over important themes from
Meier’s logic. Meier’s logic texts are perhaps the ones most familiar to
Kant scholars, yet they do not by any means exhaust his scholarly output: a
biography of Meier, published just after his death, lists at least seventy
works published in his lifetime; these vary in length from short treatises to
multivolume works and cover an incredibly diverse range of philosophical
topics, including metaphysics, ethics, theology and aesthetics, among
others. And while a not inconsiderable portion of Meier’s corpus is
devoted to disseminating and developing the thought of his revered
teacher, Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, including a German translation
of the Metaphysica, his own four-volume Metaphysik (–), the three-
volume Anfangsgründe aller schönen Wissenschaften (First Principles of all
Fine Sciences) () and the five-volume Philosophische Sittenlehre (Philo-
sophical Doctrine of Ethics) (–), to understand Meier simply as
Baumgarten’s disciple does not do justice to his frequent and striking
originality, even if it can often only be fully appreciated when viewed
through the lens of Baumgarten’s system.

This is, for instance, a major theme of the work by Pozzo; see Kant und das Problem einer Einleitung
in die Logik, and ‘Prejudices and Horizons: G. F. Meier’s Vernunftlehre and Its Relation to Kant’.

For a list of Meier’s publications, see Samuel Lange, Leben Georg Friedrich Meiers, pp. –.

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Corey W. Dyck 
Just as our understanding of Meier’s thought should not be limited to
his contributions to logic, so we should be wary of limiting our appreci-
ation of Meier’s importance for Kant to the texts Kant made use of in his
lectures. In fact, there is reason to think that there is a more profound
philosophical continuity between Meier and Kant, albeit one that only
becomes evident once we expand the context of their comparison to
include metaphysics and their respective discussions of the immortality
of the soul in particular. As I hope to show, a consideration of Meier’s
treatises on rational psychology reveals a perspective on the basis for our
certainty of the soul’s immortality that not only serves to distinguish his
views within the broader Wolffian tradition, but also constitutes a clear
anticipation of Kant’s own distinctive claim that the immortality of the
soul is (merely) an object of a moral belief. By way of illustrating this, I will
begin with a consideration of Meier’s critical discussion of Wolffian proofs
for the immortality of the soul, the goal of which is to show that
knowledge of the soul’s survival of the death of the body and of its state
in the afterlife is unavailable. I will then turn to Meier’s positive account of
our confidence in the soul’s immortality, which, according to him, is
grounded primarily in the important role played by that truth as a spur
to virtuous action. Finally, I will consider whether this complex attitude
towards the immortality of the soul can be accommodated within Meier’s
account of the modes of assent in his texts on logic, and I will conclude
that, in fact, it is best captured by Kant’s own notion of moral belief and,
accordingly, that Meier’s treatment of immortality represents an important
and widely overlooked prefiguration of the central Kantian doctrine.
. Meier’s Critique of Demonstrative Proofs

of the Soul’s Immortality
Meier’s contributions to rational psychology come at the peak of a period
of intense interest among Wolffian rational psychologists in proofs for the
immortality of the soul. Unsurprisingly, Wolff himself largely set the terms
of the discussion through his initial treatment of the topic in his Deutsche
Metaphysik (German Metaphysics) of –, with a more detailed expos-
ition following in his later Psychologia rationalis of . Significantly,
Wolff understands the immortality of the soul as involving not only the
incorruptibility of the soul, but also the retention of its capacity for distinct
perception and its personality after death. These latter two elements are

Deutsche Metaphysik, §.
 Meier & Kant on Belief in the Immortality of the Soul
emphasized by Wolff against the allegedly Cartesian conception of the
soul’s immortality merely in terms of its incorruptibility, as required in
order to ward off the spectre of the soul persisting in a state of obscure
perception, forgetful of its own identity after death, which state would be
inconsistent with God’s wisdom and justice. According to Wolff, the soul
will survive the death of the body, since it is immaterial and simple and
thus incorruptible, and he argues that we can be certain that it will also
preserve its state of distinct perception and personality in the afterlife,
given that, on the one hand, the soul’s perceptions tend to be improved as
a consequence of such great changes (as is evidenced in birth), and, on the
other hand, its continued possession of the faculty of imagination means
that perceptions had in the afterlife will spur the reproduction of similar
perceptions and our recollection that we have had them previously.
Wolff’s definition and demonstration of the soul’s immortality provided
the inspiration for a number of treatises, beginning with a dissertation on
the topic by his student Ludwig Philipp Thümmig, whom Wolff credits
with improving his own understanding of the matter. Among the most
detailed Wolffian treatments were Philosophische Gedancken über die
vernünfftige Seele und derselben Unsterblichkeit (Philosophical Thoughts on
the Rational Soul and Its Immortality) () by Johann Gustav Reinbeck
and Uberzeugender Beweiß aus der Vernunft von der Unsterblichkeit
(A Convincing Proof of Immortality through Reason) () by Israel
Gottlieb Canz. Reinbeck, who departs from Wolff in taking immortality
narrowly in terms of the soul’s inability to lose its life, or capacity for
distinct and universal concepts, in accordance with its essence and nature,
offers the following condensed proof of this conclusion:
) The rational soul [is] a simple, indivisible thing, completely distinct
from matter and consequently is incorruptible and indestructible in
itself and constantly retains its actuality.
) The rational soul, because it is a simple thing and constantly retains its
actuality, will never be deprived of its being.
) The being of a rational soul consists in such a representative power as is
capable of framing not only clear but also distinct and universal concepts.

Psychologia rationalis, §–.

For these points, see Deutsche Metaphysik, §§,  and , and Psychologia rationalis, §.

Thümmig’s dissertation was published in  as Demonstratio immortalitatis animae ex intima eius
natura deducta. See Deutsche Metaphysik, §, for Wolff’s mention of Thümmig.

Philosophische Gedancken, §LXXXVI. On Reinbeck’s identification of the soul’s life with the capacity
for concepts, see Philosophische Gedancken, §XIX.
Corey W. Dyck 
Canz adopts a rather different strategy in his text: while the first part of his
treatment seeks to buttress and augment the Wolffian arguments for the
soul’s immortality through a consideration of the nature of the soul itself,
the second part is devoted to demonstrating that there are no external
hindrances to the soul’s immortality, particularly with respect to God’s
will. Accordingly, Canz seeks to prove that God would not will
the annihilation of the soul, that it is God’s intention that the soul should
remain a spirit (a being endowed with higher faculties) after death and that
God resolved that the soul should be conscious of its continued identity.
Meier takes up a uniquely critical position in the history of Wolffian
treatments of immortality, though this would hardly be expected given his
earliest publications on rational psychology: the Beweiß: daß keine Materie
denken könne (Proof That Matter Cannot Think) of , where Meier
crafts a novel argument in defence of the soul’s simplicity, and his Beweis
der vorherbestimmten Uebereinstimmung (Proof of the Pre-Established Har-
mony) of the same year, where Meier sets out to prove ‘that the particular
psychological pre-established harmony must necessarily be accepted’.
However, with his highly original Gedancken von dem Zustande der Seele
nach dem Tode (Thoughts on the State of the Soul after Death) of ,
Meier’s thoughts take a rather more negative turn, as he characterizes
his aim as that of providing a ‘critique [Critik] of the rational proofs of
the immortality of the soul’, and indeed specifically takes issue with
Reinbeck’s and Canz’s presentations. Taking the soul’s immortality more
or less along traditional Wolffian lines, Meier allows that it is not only
important to demonstrate that the soul will continue to live after the death
of the body, but also that it preserves its higher intellectual capacities in the
afterlife, including its capacity for clear, or conscious, representations and
its personality. With respect to all of these topics, however, Meier denies
that any strict, or mathematical, certainty is possible on the grounds that
it would require an insight into God’s resolutions (Rathschlüsse) that is
unavailable to limited beings like us. While this point would seem to apply
principally to Canz’s attempted proofs, Meier contends that proofs that

Uberzeugender Beweiß §§ and .

On the dating of this text, see Lange (Leben, ) and Paola Rumore, ‘Georg Friedrich Meiers
Theorie der Unsterblichkeit der Seele im zeitgenössischen Kontext’, p. n.

Beweiß: daß keine Materie, § (pp. –). (Since Meier’s sections typically extend over a number
of pages, references to his works are to the sections, with page numbers given in parentheses.)

See Beweis der vorherbestimmten Uebereinstimmung, § (p. ). On Wolff’s defense of the
‘hypothesis’ of the preestablished harmony, see my Kant and Rational Psychology, pp. –.
 
Gedancken von dem Zustande, § (p. ). Ibid., § (pp. –).
 Meier & Kant on Belief in the Immortality of the Soul
proceed from the soul’s (internal) essence and nature, such as Reinbeck’s,
are likewise implicated inasmuch as the soul’s status as a contingent, finite
being implies that its nonexistence is possible, which possibility is entirely
consistent with its annihilation at the hands of God at the time of the
death of the body. To be successful, then, such proofs are ultimately
required to demonstrate ‘that the soul will also never be annihilated and
that God has chosen for it to endure eternally’.
Accordingly, Meier proceeds to consider whether it is possible to know
that God would not annihilate the soul, inasmuch as its continued exist-
ence can be known to be part of the best of all possible worlds: ‘He who
would demonstrate that God has resolved or not resolved to do something
must demonstrate philosophically that the object of this resolution either
would be possible in the best world and so would belong to the same, or
would be impossible in it.’ Such a demonstration, Meier continues,
could proceed either on the basis of experience or on the basis of reason.
With respect to the former, Meier allows that experience permits us to be
‘unfailingly certain [untrüglich gewiss]’ that something that we cognize as
actual, including our soul in its present state, does in fact belong to the best
possible world (inasmuch as the actual world is the best possible), but our
cognition is here limited to things of present and past experience, and so
such a demonstration is ‘inapplicable to the question of the immortality of
the soul’, which obviously concerns its future existence. An attempt to
demonstrate that the soul’s immortality belongs to the best possible world
a priori similarly fails, according to Meier, since this would require that we
possess a concept of ‘the entire network of the best world’ such that we
could determine that the soul belongs to it. Such a comprehensive under-
standing is beyond our limited powers, however, as we can only be
confident in the ‘general proposition’ that ‘everything will later be brought
to actuality without which this world would not be the best’, but cannot
determine whether any particular future occurrence, such as the soul’s
surviving the death of the body, is a part of that world or not. Nor can an
appeal to God’s nature, such as his goodness, wisdom or justice, supply a
basis for mathematical certainty on this score, as Meier denies that we can
know in advance of some event occurring that it accords, for instance, with
God’s goodness, and so ‘that the eternal life of the soul is something
demanded by these attributes, is not a claim that can attain to complete

Ibid., § (p. ).

See ibid., § (pp. –), where Meier explicitly discusses Reinbeck in connection with this point.
  
Ibid., § (p. ). Ibid., § (pp. –). Ibid., § (p. ).
Corey W. Dyck 
certainty’. Given all this, Meier concludes, rather strikingly, that far from
being certain that the soul will survive the death of the body, we are in fact
‘mathematically certain that the soul can die’, which is to say that
considered in itself, it is mortal.
Meier makes a similar case with respect to the other two requirements
for the immortality of the soul, namely the preservation of our capacity
for conscious representations and for the recognition of our identity.
Generally, the fact that we cannot be certain that the soul will survive
the death of the body already implies that anything that can be said
regarding the state of the soul after death is likewise uncertain (since the
former is presupposed in any talk of the latter). Nonetheless, Meier thinks
that doubts about the soul’s preservation of these higher capacities can be
raised even assuming the continued life of the soul. Concerning the
retention of its faculty for conscious representation, Meier disputes
the impossibility of the soul’s falling into a state of merely unconscious
representations in the afterlife, claiming that any ‘greater physical
[i.e., natural] perfection of the soul is a future contingent matter, which
rests on the decision of God’ to preserve and improve the soul’s capaci-
ties. It is, accordingly, entirely possible that God should choose to
withhold this natural perfection from the soul, and so it cannot be
demonstrated that the soul will not ‘be shrouded for eternity in sheer
obscurity and darkness’. With respect to the soul’s retention of its
personality, Meier targets the Wolffian demonstration, contending that,
even under the presupposition that the soul has conscious states in the
afterlife such that it can recognize them as similar to past states, it still
cannot be demonstrated that God must decide to preserve the soul’s
memory of its past or would not ‘revoke’ the associative law that governs
the operation of imagination after the death of the body.
As might be expected, Meier’s treatment proved rather controversial,
with a number of reviews and responses on the part of critics prompting
him to pen a detailed reply, the Vertheidigung seiner Gedancken vom
Zustande der Seele nach dem Tode (Defense of His Thoughts on the State of
the Soul after Death), published in . What is most important for our
purposes, however, is that Meier’s critical attitude in the Gedancken
 
See ibid., § (p. ) and § (p. ). Ibid., § (p. ); my emphasis.
  
Ibid., § (pp. –). Ibid., § (p. ). See also § (p. ). Ibid., § (p. ).

Ibid., § (p. ).

For some of the reaction to Meier’s text, see Rumore, ‘Meiers Theorie’, pp. –. Meier would
ultimately publish a further text in , the Beweis daß die menschliche Seele ewig lebt (Proof That
the Human Soul Lives Eternally), which purported to offer a new demonstrative proof of the soul’s
 Meier & Kant on Belief in the Immortality of the Soul
towards the possibility of any mathematical certainty concerning the soul’s
immortality unmistakably foreshadows Kant’s own critical posture with
respect to the whole of rational psychology in the Paralogisms of Pure
Reason. Indeed, one particularly clear point of overlap concerns a conse-
quence Meier draws from the foregoing regarding the relevance of settling
whether the soul is simple or composite for demonstrating its immortality.
As Meier argues, since the soul’s immortality ultimately depends upon
God’s choice to preserve the soul after the body’s death, and because God
could just as well choose to preserve a composite as he could a simple
substance, it follows that the affirmation or denial of the soul’s simple
nature is utterly irrelevant to the issue of its immortality. Meier asserts this
rather pointedly in his original Beweiß: daß keine Materie denken könne:
‘We will join ourselves to that party which holds the soul for a simple thing
and which denies matter any capacity for thought. Yet, we are also of the
conviction that this entire investigation, while it is uncommonly difficult,
has little use [Nutzen].’ Of course, this same contention would later be
echoed by Kant, who focuses his attention in the Second Paralogism on
the alleged usefulness of the claim of the soul’s simplicity for the rational
psychologist’s inference to its natural immortality; thus, Kant claims there
that ‘not the least use [Gebrauch] of this proposition [i.e., of simplicity] can
be made in respect of its dissimilarity to or affinity with matter’ such that
the soul’s natural immortality would follow (A).
. Meier on the Moral Certainty of Immortality

The potential significance of Meier’s discussion for Kant does not end with
his negative case concerning our claim to know that the soul is immortal.
Crucially, Meier goes on to contend that our lack of knowledge of the
soul’s immortality does not imply that there is no rational basis for
assenting to the soul’s immortality or even that there is no sense in which
we can be certain that the soul survives the death of the body; as he
emphasizes, while he takes the immortality of the soul to be mathematic-
ally ‘uncertain’, this is not to say that he ‘denies and rejects it’ as such.
Instead, he argues that, in spite of lacking a strict demonstration of the
eternal life (for a convenient if sceptical summary, see Henning’s Geschichte von den Seelen der
Menschen, pp. –, as well as Francesco Tomasoni, ‘Mendelssohn’s Concept of the Human
Soul in Comparison with Those of Meier and Kant’, pp. –). However, according to Meier’s
own report, some regarded his new proof as deliberately weak and unconvincing (see Meier’s
preface to the second edition of Beweis daß die menschliche Seele ewig lebt []).
 
Beweiß: daß keine Materie, §. Vernunftlehre, § (p. ).
Corey W. Dyck 
soul’s immortality, there are other grounds on the basis of which we are
warranted in holding it: ‘to the contrary we recognize so many and
important probable grounds for the opposite through the light of reason
to be necessary and sufficient such that any rational being is determined
to hold it for true [für wahr halte] that God has chosen the unceasing life of
the soul’. Naturally, the authority of Scripture, and revelation in general,
is foremost among the grounds that Meier cites: ‘as concerns the immor-
tality of the soul, Scripture supplements the deficiency of reason, advances
beyond where reason stops, and provides a needed light for us where
reason leaves us in a pernicious darkness’. Indeed, Meier’s reliance on
the authority of revelation when it comes to our certainty of the soul’s
immortality is consistent with his pessimism concerning reason’s effective-
ness in theological matters, a fact that has led some to compare his views
to those of Bayle, a comparison that Meier, for his part, discouraged.
And while Meier sometimes goes as far as to contend that ‘human
reason could not be completely convinced of the immortality of the soul
without revelation’, he also draws attention to the limits of revelation
and, consequently, the need for rational grounds for our certainty of
immortality. In his Vertheidigung, for instance, he notes rather flatly that
any attempt to demonstrate the soul’s immortality on the basis of Scripture
could hardly prove compelling for those who ‘do not acknowledge the holy
Scripture’.
For this reason, Meier contends, we need to consider the possibility of
independently sufficient rational grounds in favour of the soul’s survival
of death that provide the basis for a moral (as opposed to demonstrative or
mathematical) certainty of our immortality. As a matter of fact, he takes
such grounds to be available: ‘I submit moreover that this doctrine can be
proven from reason with the highest probability, indeed with a moral
certainty’, and later in the Vertheidigung, he lays out what is required in
order to prove the soul’s immortality with moral certainty:
If I know only grounds in favor of [some truth], and not a single one against
it excepting that I must admit that the opposite of the truth is possible, then

Gedancken von dem Zustande, § (p. ).

Ibid., § (p. ); see also § (pp. –) and Vertheidigung, § (p. ).

See Wessell Jr., ‘G. F. Meier and the Genesis of Philosophical Theodicies of History in th-
Century Germany’, pp. –; and Gawlick, ‘G. F. Meiers Stellung in der Religionsphilosophie der
deutschen Aufklärung’, especially p. . For the (not unjustified) comparison with Bayle, see
Tomasoni, ‘Mendelssohn’s Concept’, p. , and for Meier’s denunciations of Bayle, see Gedancken
von dem Zustande, § (p. ), § (p. ) and § (p. ).
 
Vertheidigung, § (p. ). Ibid., § (p. ).
 Meier & Kant on Belief in the Immortality of the Soul
it is a moral certainty . . . [By contrast,] if I know only grounds in favor of
the truth and not a single one against it and, moreover, that the opposite
of the same would not at all be possible, then we call that a mathematical
and apodictic certainty.
Meier here understands moral certainty, in accordance with the traditional
conception, as a kind of probable knowledge, where the latter is understood
simply as any knowledge for which we have rational grounds in its favour
that nonetheless are insufficient for ‘complete [ausführlichen] certainty’.
While any putative item of knowledge is probable for which there are more
grounds in its favour than against, Meier indicates that it is only held with
moral certainty when it achieves a higher degree of probability, such that
it is appropriately assumed to be the case for the sake of action (though
Meier never specifies what degree of probability this corresponds to). Meier
supplies an example of a general who, while not mathematically certain of
prevailing on the battlefield, can yet claim moral certainty, given that ‘all of
the probabilities’ suggest that he will be victorious. Generally speaking,
then, a claim is morally certain for Meier when it is taken to be the most
probable among the available options where, due to the exigencies of a
situation and the limits of our own insight, we must act on the basis of one
of them. As a result, moral certainty is as good as, or even better than,
perfect certainty when it comes to action (since lack of perfect certainty can
prevent us from acting), which is to say that ‘with respect to our prudential
[kluges], rational, and virtuous activity, [such certainty] is to be valued just
as highly as mathematical certainty’.
Accordingly, when it comes to demonstrating the moral certainty of the
immortality of the soul, Meier endeavours to show that we have more
grounds in favour of taking the soul to be immortal than the opposite.
First, Meier points out that nothing he has claimed regarding immortality
amounts to providing a ground against it; rather, he takes himself to have
merely shown that the soul’s survival of the death of the body does not
follow from reason (‘aus der Vernunft’) by means of strict proof, which does
not imply that it is contrary to reason (‘wider der Vernunft’). Indeed, Meier

See ibid., § (p. ) and § (p. ). See also Gedancken von dem Zustande, § (p. ): ‘I take it as
an established fact that not only can the soul’s immortality only be proven to be very probable, but
that it can also be proven with moral certainty by means of reason.’

Vernunftlehre, § (p. ). For a compact history of discussions of moral certainty from Descartes
to Kant, see Fonnesu, ‘Kant on Moral Certainty’. I do, however, dispute his contention (at least
with respect to the moral certainty of immortality) that Meier’s ‘position about moral certainty is
traditional, and that he repeats classical arguments: moral certainty concerns a probable knowledge
useful for daily life and based on testimony (fides historica)’ (p. ).

Vernunftlehre, § (p. ).
Corey W. Dyck 
contends that similar considerations to those which undermined any claim
to mathematical certainty of the soul’s immortality also suffice to rule out
any claim to being mathematically certain that the death of the soul is part
of the best possible world, since a divine choice for the ‘eternal death’ of
the soul would be just as inscrutable as any in favour of the soul’s eternal
life. Meier thus concludes that ‘reason does not give us a single ground,
even with the slightest degree of probability, from which we could derive
that God had chosen the death of the soul’.
Significantly, however, when it comes to providing the rational grounds
in favour of the probability of immortality, Meier does not argue that the
evidence we already have in its favour (on, for instance, the basis of our
limited understanding of the constitution of this world) renders it probable;
instead, he contends that it is simply on account of the fact that the soul’s
immortality provides an important support for morality that it is morally
certain. Specifically, Meier contends that the immortality of the soul serves
to considerably strengthen our existing motivations towards virtuous
actions: ‘I must however confess that the immortality of the soul contains
a preeminent and important motivation for virtue and religion. Were the
soul not immortal, then we would have far fewer and weaker incitements
[Anreitzungen] to be pious and virtuous.’ Most obviously, the hope for
reward for our virtuous actions in the afterlife, and the fear of punishment
for vicious ones, provides a powerful incentive for us to act morally in this
life: ‘If one has the hope of an eternal blessedness and considers that we will
approach the supreme being in eternity albeit without fully reaching Him,
then this thought awakens a justly burning desire to make a beginning of
this progress to blessedness already in this life.’
Meier also suggests that the immortality of the soul offers an antidote to
the moral pessimism that might result inasmuch as we observe that the
rewards of virtuous actions, and punishment of vicious ones, are frequently
not secured in this life. Moreover, Meier recognizes that it is not merely
the prospect of surviving the death of the body that serves to shore up
morality, but also of preserving our higher capacities in the afterlife which

Gedancken von dem Zustande, § (pp. –). See also ibid., § (pp. –) and Vertheidigung, §
(p. ).

Gedancken von dem Zustande, § (p. ).

Ibid., § (p. ); see also § (p. ), where Meier contrasts our interest in future goods and the
‘true and rational pleasure’ that we seek in the afterlife with the ‘Epicurean’ elevation of the pleasure
found in present goods to the highest form of pleasure.

Gedancken von dem Zustande, § (p. ): if ‘the virtuous set their hopes on God only in this life
alone, then they will be the most miserable of all’. See also § (p. ): immortality ‘is the most
important consolation with which we can comfort our mind amid a thousand adversities’.
 Meier & Kant on Belief in the Immortality of the Soul
is required if immortality is to serve as a sufficiently strong motivation
towards virtue. Thus, he notes that those
who advocate and support that great truth of the soul’s immortality must
not be satisfied with proving that the soul will continue to live after its
departure from the stage of the present time. Rather, they must seek
principally to present the nature of this future state in such a way that it
can be a powerful motivation for virtue and religion, that it might provide a
reason for consolation amidst all of the adversities of this restless life, and
raise our hopes so high as to open a prospect for us onto the blessed fields of
eternity.
Given, then, that immortality plays this crucial role, and given that reason
can offer no grounds against the possibility of the soul surviving the death
of the body, Meier contends that we have sufficient grounds to hold the
immortality of the soul with moral certainty, and, indeed, that such
certainty is all that is needed to motivate us to act well. While Meier
also allows that virtue is something ‘splendid’ in itself and so we can expect
from it ‘splendid consequences already in this life’, he claims the soul’s
immortality nonetheless has an ‘incomparable use’, even if not an indis-
pensable one, as ‘one of the most important supports of religion and the
whole of morality’.
Just as Meier was distinguished in the tradition of Wolffian rational
psychology by his doubts regarding any mathematical demonstration of
the soul’s immortality, so was he also distinguished within that tradition by
his positive, distinctly moral ‘proof’ of that claim. For Meier, the basis for
the (moral) certainty of the soul’s survival of the death of the body finds a
rational basis in the important role that ‘great truth’ plays in undergirding
morality by providing a reliable and widely available incentive to virtue,
where this confidence is only ‘noticeably strengthened throughout by faith
[Glauben]’. Moreover, Meier’s approach contrasts with that of some of
his contemporaries, who likewise sought to prove the soul’s immortality on
(broadly speaking) moral grounds. As opposed to, for instance, Christian
August Crusius’s ‘moral’ proof that the soul must be immortal, since we

Gedancken von dem Zustande, § (pp. –), emphasis mine; cf. also § (p. ).

Ibid., § (p. ): ‘Yet, since it is not necessary that our motives be mathematically certain, one can
reject our certainty of the immortality of the soul through reason without weakening or dampening
the zeal for virtue and piety.’

For these claims, see Gedancken von dem Zustande, § (p. ), Vertheidigung, § (p. ) and
Gedancken von dem Zustande, § (p. ), respectively. See also ibid., § (p. ): ‘The immortality
of the soul is one of the most important and principal grounds of all virtue and religion.’

Vertheidigung, § (p. ) and Gedancken von dem Zustande, § (p. ).
Corey W. Dyck 
have a drive for virtue, perfection and union with God that would require
eternal life to realize, and since God would be unjust if he instilled such a
drive in us without also allowing for its fulfilment, Meier’s proof does not
turn on the ascription of (for him, contentious) moral properties to finite
spirits, and he consistently emphasizes the rational character of the
resulting moral certainty of immortality. Yet, Meier’s signal departure
lies in explicitly taking moral certainty not merely in its (traditional)
understanding in terms of probable cognition, but, at least when it comes
to the supposition of the soul’s immortality, as a certainty founded wholly
in the acknowledged significance of that claim for morality. That ‘moral
certainty’ could have such a distinctively moral inflection is a point later
emphasized by Kant for similar reasons, and indeed in a passage comment-
ing on Meier’s presentation of moral certainty in the Auszug aus der
Vernunftlehre (cf. §), though Meier is not explicitly implicated in his
criticism, ‘Most, almost all autores are completely unacquainted with moral
certainty and instead they take it in each case to be probability’ rather than
as involving ‘a moral judgment’ (LB, :).
. Meier and Kant on Belief

With respect to the immortality of the soul, then, Meier contends that
while it is not subject to demonstration, we are nonetheless entitled to
maintain it with moral certainty primarily on the basis of its role as a
support for morality (and religion). Given that in his works on logic Meier
offers a classification of the modes of assent, one which served as the point
of departure for Kant’s own in the Canon of Pure Reason, it is natural to
consider where this complex attitude concerning immortality might fit in
Meier’s account. In the sixth chapter of the first part of his Vernunftlehre,
entitled ‘on the certainty of learned cognition’, Meier offers a detailed
discussion (clearly inspired by Locke’s) of what are for him the three
primary modes of assent, namely conviction (Überzeugung), persuasion
(Überredung) and opinion (Meinung). Meier’s treatment of these attitudes
is framed in terms of an account of ‘certainty subjectively considered

See Entwurf der nothwendigen Vernunfft-Wahrheiten (Sketch of the Necessary Truths of Reason), §;
and Rumore’s contribution to this volume. For Meier’s criticism of such arguments, see Gedancken
von dem Zustande, §§– (pp. –).

For complementary accounts of Kant’s departures from Meier on this score, see Gelfert, ‘Kant and
the Enlightenment’s Contribution to Social Epistemology’; and Pasternack, ‘The Development and
Scope of Kantian Belief: The Highest Good, The Practical Postulates and the Fact of Reason’,
especially pp. –.
 Meier & Kant on Belief in the Immortality of the Soul
[certitudo subiective spectata]’, which he characterizes generally in terms of
the ‘consciousness of the truth, or the clear recognition of the truth’ of a
cognition. A cognition can be held with varying degrees of certainty,
where the highest such degree corresponds to ‘complete certainty [completa
certitudo, eine ausführliche Gewissheit]’, which Meier identifies with convic-
tion. Persuasion, by contrast, amounts to a merely apparent conviction,
and by way of distinguishing the two, he proposes a ‘test [Probe]’ whereby
we consider whether our certainty is such that it drives out ‘all rational fear
of the opposite’ being the case. In addition, Meier considers attitudes
that involve less than (the appearance of) complete certainty, among which
he classifies opinion, or ‘a given uncertain cognition insofar as we accept it
and at the same time recognize that it is not certain’. Meier takes
opinions to make up the majority of our epistemic attitudes (‘the world
is governed by opinions [die Welt durch Meinungen regiert werde]’), where
these range from philosophical opinions, which are assumed for the
purpose of providing the ground of some phenomena in the world
(as with the philosophical opinion concerning the existence of magnetic
matter), to common opinions, which are assumed for no such purpose.
Oddly, Meier himself never explicitly identifies which mode of assent
captures the attitude towards the immortality of the soul that emerges
from his considerations in the Gedancken. Indeed, it is not even clear that
this attitude can be accommodated within these three modes. Beginning
with the most obviously unsuitable, far from our moral certainty of
immortality amounting to a case of persuasion, Meier claims that it is
those individuals who think that we are mathematically certain of the
afterlife who fall prey to persuasion: despite the fact that ‘reason can say
extremely little or nothing at all with certainty . . . the vast majority speak
as confidently of these things as if they had already been dead once’.
There is a better case to be made for the identification of this attitude with
opinion, since Meier occasionally refers to it as such, as when, at the outset
of the Gedancken, he refers to the ‘opinion [Meinung] of the immortality of
the soul’, and additionally he sometimes stresses that we can have little to
 
Auszug, § (p. ). Ibid., § (pp. –) and § (p. ).

See Vernunftlehre, § (p. ), and for this formulation of the test, see Auszug, § (p. ). Note
that the qualification of this fear as ‘rational [vernünftige]’ does not occur in the parallel passage in
the Vernunftlehre (§ [pp. –]).
 
Auszug, § (p. ). Vernunftlehre, § (p. ); cf. als Auszug § (p. ).

Gedancken von dem Zustande, § (p. ); see also earlier in the same section, where Meier accuses
these thinkers of ‘proceed[ing] from belief to complete conviction through an unthinking leap’
(p. ).
Corey W. Dyck 
no (mathematical) certainty of immortality, as when he claims that ‘as far
as concerns the immortality of the soul, reason leaves us in complete
uncertainty’. However, Meier leaves little doubt that he holds immortal-
ity as something more than a common or philosophical opinion, as he
frequently refers to it straightforwardly as a ‘truth’ and, consistent with its
characterization as morally certain, assigns to it the ‘highest degree of
probability’. This confidence in the immortality of the soul might
be taken to qualify it as a conviction, yet that this is so is also not clear.
For starters, Meier tends to associate conviction with mathematical cer-
tainty, and it is presumably on the basis of this association that he
frequently denies that we have ‘complete conviction’ of the soul’s immor-
tality. Moreover, it is not obvious that our confidence in the immortality
of the soul survives the test that Meier outlines for conviction, namely
that it drives out all rational fear of the opposite being the case, since he
has argued that reason confirms that the death of the soul by annihilation
at God’s hands is a live possibility, even if it cannot be shown to
be probable.
A possible alternative mode of assent can be found in Meier’s surpris-
ingly detailed discussion of belief (Glaube) in his logic texts. Meier focuses
his treatment of belief in the Auszug to what he calls historical belief (fides
historica), which he defines as ‘that approval which we give to some matter
for the sake of some witness’. This is to say that, properly speaking, belief
for Meier does not correspond to a distinct epistemic attitude, but rather
designates a distinct source of the certainty of cognition, one which he
contrasts with experience and reason, and which can likewise admit a wide
range of certainty, depending on the credibility of the witnesses who are its
source. While this conception of belief obviously does not lend itself to
an assertion of the immortality of the soul, he goes on to introduce a

Gedancken von dem Zustande, § (p. ) and § (p. ); see also ibid., § (p. ) and § (p. ).

On the reference to the soul’s immortality as a truth, see, for instance, ibid., § (pp.  and ), §
(p. ) and § (p. ), and Vertheidigung § (p. ). Concerning its probability, see Gedancken
von dem Zustande, § (p. ) (my emphasis); see also § (p. ).

Gedancken von dem Zustande, § (p. ), § (p. ), § (p. ) and § (p. ). At the end of the
fifth section of the Gedancken von dem Zustande, however, Meier goes as far as to claim that ‘mere
reason cannot yield any conviction regarding the soul’s immortality’ (§ [p. ]), though
obviously ‘mere’ is an important qualifier in interpreting this statement.

See Gedancken von dem Zustande, § (p. ): ‘It is accordingly possible in itself that the soul is
annihilated, and if it is annihilated its existence will cease, and it will lose its life along with its
nature, which considerable loss is the death of the soul.’ In a passage previously cited, Meier
distinguishes moral from demonstrative certainty precisely in terms of the latter proving ‘the
opposite of the same would not at all be possible’ (Vertheidigung, § [p. ]).
 
Auszug, § (p. ). See Vernunftlehre, § (pp. –) and § (p. ).
 Meier & Kant on Belief in the Immortality of the Soul
number of other derivative sorts of belief that are more promising. For
instance, in a concession to the well-known ambiguity of the German
Glaube, Meier also considers what he calls ‘beatifying [seligmachenden]
belief’, which he indicates is ‘of an entirely different nature’ than the
historical sort and which is treated primarily by theologians. Indeed, just
this sense of ‘belief’ is operative in Meier’s assertion of the soul’s immor-
tality in his ‘confession of faith’ that precedes much of the discussion of the
Gedancken: ‘I believe [glaube], on the basis of the infinitely many witnesses
of the holy Scripture . . . with the greatest certainty of faith [Glaubens] that
the soul is immortal.’ While this sense of belief arguably captures that
confidence in immortality that has its source in Scripture, Meier also
introduces derivative forms of belief that incorporate contributions from
reason. So, he mentions ‘reasonable belief [vernünftigen Glauben]’, which is
only briefly mentioned in the Auszug, where it is characterized simply as
the habit of believing only trustworthy witnesses, whereas in the Vernunf-
tlehre, Meier indicates that it is to be understood more broadly as pertain-
ing to ‘things and truths . . . that are necessary for us to know and with
respect to which we would remain completely ignorant without belief’.
Additionally, and most suggestively, Meier distinguishes a mixed form of
belief, which, in contrast with a pure belief that has its source only in
testimony, ‘consists in the unification of belief with the other sources of
our knowledge’, such as experience and reason. As an example of such a
mixed belief (and one involving a contribution from reason), Meier cites
our certainty that ‘our highest good consists in religion’, and, given this, it
would not be much of a stretch to consider the certainty of the immortality
of the soul as another example, inasmuch as it comprises elements taken
from revelation and from the rational consideration of the theoretical and
practical grounds in favour of the soul’s survival of the body’s death.
While Meier’s complete account of belief thus yields some suggestive
alternatives, it is not really until Kant’s formulation of his distinctive
conception of moral belief that we find an attitude that can adequately
capture Meier’s various claims regarding the (moral) certainty of immor-
tality. Briefly, in his own discussion in the Canon of Pure Reason, Kant
provides a principled division of the modes of assent on the basis of his

Vernunftlehre, § (p. ).

Gedancken von dem Zustande, § (p. ). See also ibid., § (p. ) and Vertheidigung, § (p. ).

Auszug, § (pp. –) and Vernunftlehre, § (pp. –).

See Vernunftlehre, § (pp. –), where Meier also claims that our certainty that religion is the
highest good is the result of reason, particularly through considerations proper to ‘the philosophical
doctrine of ethics’.
Corey W. Dyck 
distinction between objective and subjective grounds for holding some-
thing to be true, where the former sort of grounds involve epistemic
warrants for a given claim and the latter sort involve psychological causes
that lie at the basis of an assent (A/B), and where both types
of grounds can be sufficient or insufficient. In line with this, Kant
considers persuasion in terms of an assent involving sufficient subjective
grounds that are wrongly held as objective (A/B); correlatively,
Kant understands opinion in terms of ‘taking something to be true with
the consciousness that it is subjectively as well as objectively insufficient’
(A/B). When it comes to conviction, Kant claims that it involves
subjective sufficiency, and proceeds to distinguish two kinds of conviction,
namely knowledge (Wissen) and belief, where knowledge rests on suffi-
cient subjective and objective grounds and belief ‘is only subjectively
sufficient and is at the same time held to be objectively insufficient’
(A/B). As Kant makes clear, this is to say that beliefs involve claims
that cannot possibly be proven through theoretical reason and that
we are only licensed to assent to for the sake of some practical end
(A/B), where in the case of moral belief, this end is fulfilling the
moral law (A/B).
Strikingly, the attitude towards the soul’s immortality that results from
Meier’s exploration of the topic in the Gedancken links up nearly seam-
lessly with Kant’s notion of moral belief, and indeed, this serves to clarify
and elucidate aspects of Meier’s account. First, Meier doubtless under-
stands our attitude towards the immortality of the soul as amounting to a
subjective sufficiency, and it is this that lies behind his comparison of that
attitude with conviction, though Meier’s apparent assumption that con-
viction requires objectively sufficient grounds precludes him from actu-
ally identifying it as such. Related to this, Kant can be taken to offer a
friendly amendment to Meier’s claim of a moral certainty of immortality
which clarifies the distinctive sort of conviction involved when he contends
that ‘the conviction is not logical but moral certainty’ and accordingly that
‘I must not even say “It is morally certain . . .” but rather “I am” morally
certain’ (A/B). Equally important, Meier’s position with respect to
immortality at the conclusion of his investigation of the Gedancken is

Here I follow Pasternack in classifying belief as a form of conviction; see ‘Development and Scope’,
pp. – and the texts cited at p. n (and for recent detailed discussions of Kant’s
classification of propositional attitudes, see the literature cited at p. n).

See, for instance, Vernunftlehre, § (pp. –), where Meier claims that ‘complete certainty’,
which is later identified with conviction, involves ‘recognizing all of the characteristic marks of the
truth that must be recognized as such in order to recognize a truth for the truth that it is’.
 Meier & Kant on Belief in the Immortality of the Soul
precisely one where the belief ‘is only subjectively sufficient and is at the
same time held to be objectively insufficient’; in fact Meier, like Kant, will
claim (in the Gedancken) that it is impossible to have any knowledge of the
soul’s survival of the body’s death, given that any mathematical certainty
in this regard would require knowledge of God’s resolutions in the creation
of this world, where such insight simply ‘exceeds the limits [Schrancken] of
human powers’. Lastly, as we have seen, Meier likewise contends that
our conviction in the soul’s immortality only holds from the practical
point of view, or, as Meier puts it, reason gives us ‘strong enough grounds
as are necessary to obligate [verpflichten] any given rational being to accept
the immortality of the soul as a truth, and to make use of it as a motivation
for action’.
In light of the foregoing, it should be clear that there is what one
commentator has called a ‘genuine connection’ between the thought of
Meier and of Kant, one that extends further, and deeper, than a limited
comparison of their respective logical works might initially suggest. Insofar
as Meier argues, on the one hand, that we cannot know that the soul will
survive death, though we can know that such survival is possible, and, on
the other hand, that there are non-epistemic grounds distinct from those
supplied by revelation that support our certainty in immortality, he clearly
blazes a trail for Kant’s later defence of a moral belief in the immortality of
the soul. Meier is, of course, still some way from the complete Kantian
doctrine: for instance, he merely asserts that the belief in immortality is
enormously helpful to the ends of morality, and not, as Kant later would,
that it is necessary for the coherence of those ends altogether; nonetheless,
it would not be surprising if Meier was in the background as Kant
developed his views on immortality. Significantly, this continuity between
the two thinkers extends beyond their respective accounts of the moral
certainty of immortality to their underlying aim in investigating the true
grounds of our certainty on the topic in the first place. As Meier attests, he
found that the dogmatic defense of the mathematical certainty of immor-
tality actually plays into the hands of the critic of religion, who, to be
successful, need only show that our certainty cannot ascend to this

Gedancken von dem Zustande, § (p. ). Along similar lines, Meier contends in a later treatise –
the Betrachtungen über die Schrancken der menschlichen Erkentnis (Considerations of the Limits of
Human Cognition) of  – that it is a function of our own cognitive limitations that we are unable
to conceive of God making a resolution at all, inasmuch as ‘we cannot think of God’s free
resolution . . . without the alterability of God’, which, of course, is absurd (§ [p. ]).

Gedancken von dem Zustande, § (p. ).

The phrase is Pozzo’s; see ‘Prejudices and Horizons’, p. .
Corey W. Dyck 
unattainable standard, and it was for this reason that Meier sought to
undermine any claim of mathematical certainty. Given this, and given the
alternative ground for our certainty of immortality that he discloses,
it might be said that Meier, as Kant later would, undertook to deny any
knowledge of immortality in order to make room for belief.

Gedancken von dem Zustande, § (pp. –).

My thanks to Ben Hill and Lawrence Pasternack for their helpful feedback on earlier versions of this
chapter.
 
Maimon and Kant on the Nature of the Mind

Brandon C. Look
The history of philosophy from  onward is in many ways simply

the story of the reception of Immanuel Kant’s Critical philosophy.
The Critique of Pure Reason, published that year, was to usher in a new
era of philosophy, a Copernican revolution in metaphysics and epistemol-
ogy that would rein in the pretensions of dogmatic metaphysics and
answer skepticism. At least, that is what Kant hoped would happen, and,
in the minds of many, ultimately did happen. But the reaction from the
first wave of readers frustrated Kant. While some recognized the novelty
and importance of Kant’s philosophy, many seemed not to have under-
stood his argument or his project, forcing Kant to compose his précis, the
Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (), and to rewrite large parts of
the Critique of Pure Reason for its second edition ().
Of the many contemporary philosophers who engaged with his phil-
osophy, Kant thought that none had understood him and the main
questions of his system as well as Salomon Maimon (–), nor
had anyone possessed as much perspicacity in such deep investigations.
Maimon was, however, largely a philosophical autodidact, and the quint-
essential outsider in the German philosophical scene. As he writes to Kant,
he was “condemned at birth to live out the best years of [his] life in the
woods of Lithuania [and] deprived of every assistance in acquiring know-
ledge” (Corr, :–). It was only in his twenties that Maimon was able
to travel to Berlin and begin a deeper study of philosophy, mathematics,
and the natural sciences, working with, among others, Moses Mendels-
sohn. In , Maimon came upon Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and
devoted himself to its study. Three years later, he published his own

See his letter of May , , to Marcus Herz, written after Kant had been sent a draft of Maimon’s
Versuch (Corr, :).

Maimon led one of the most interesting lives of the great and medium-great philosophers, and his
own Lebensgeschichte is a wonderful read. And while Maimon wrote several fascinating philosophical
works, the emphasis in this chapter will be primarily on his Versuch.

Brandon C. Look 
working-through of the Critical philosophy, his Versuch über die Trans-
cendentalphilosophie (Essay on Transcendental Philosophy). To Kant and
most readers of this work, however, the Versuch was marked by its
brilliance and insight, on the one hand, and by its occasional incompre-
hensibility, on the other. Indeed, many were left not knowing entirely
where Maimon stood on the central issue of Kant’s philosophy, and
Maimon himself did not help matters by offering the following self-
description: “To what degree I am a Kantian, an Anti-Kantian, both at
once or neither I leave it to the judgment of the thoughtful reader.”
Indeed, Maimon’s stance elicited this rather biting comment from an early
reviewer of his work: “You know, dear friend, that given the recent
revolution in philosophy, where the scholarly world is divided into two
main parties, one really has to declare oneself for one of the sides if one
does not want to be treated as an enemy by both, and that the first
question that anybody has to think of with each publication of a new
work of philosophy is this: is the author Kantian or Anti-Kantian?” The
reviewer’s diagnosis proved to be exactly right: Kant saw him as an
opponent, and anti-Kantians saw him as the best of Kant’s followers.
Now, a full treatment of Maimon’s Versuch, including an explication of its
Kantian and anti-Kantian elements, would be a large task. Accordingly, in
this chapter, I will focus on one strand of Maimon’s work: his account of the
nature of the cognizing mind and, in particular, the distinction between
sensibility and understanding. It is clear, I think, that Maimon is quite
critical of Kant regarding this distinction, and this is of great importance in
understanding the history of philosophy in this period. After all, according to
Kant, the Leibnizian-Wolffian philosophy is led ineluctably into dogmatism
precisely because it fails to distinguish the two mental faculties of sensibility
and understanding. In my view, Kant overstates his case against Leibniz and
other philosophers working in the Leibnizian tradition; he also offers an
unsatisfactory account of the nature of this distinction. And Maimon appeals
both explicitly and implicitly to a Leibnizian account of the mind in arguing
against Kant on this point, while at the same time reworking this view and

Versuch, p. . References will be to the page numbers of the original edition of , which is
reproduced in facsimile in Maimon’s Gesammelte Werke, vol. . Both the modern Meiner edition
and the recent English-language edition have the original page numbers in their marginalia.
Translations of Maimon’s Versuch are my own, though I have consulted the translation by
Midgley (Essay on Transcendental Philosophy, ).

Andreas Riem, “Schreiben des Herrn R. an Herrn Maimon,” Berlinisches Journal für Aufklärung /
(Letztes Stück, ), p. .

For Kant’s view, see his letter to Herz cited in note . For the opposing view, see, for example, Holst,
Über das Fundament der gesammten Philosophie des Herrn Kant, p. .
 Maimon and Kant on the Nature of the Mind
combining it with certain insights from the empiricist tradition. In this way,
Maimon provides a very subtle and powerful response to Kant’s criticism of
rationalist metaphysics. And by focusing on this criticism of Kant’s philoso-
phy, we can see in a very vivid way how one brilliant contemporary of Kant
was able to draw on aspects of the thought of Kant’s predecessors and older
contemporaries to understand and to answer Kant’s seminal work.
. Sensibility and Understanding in Kant

Before turning to Maimon’s Auseinandersetzung with Kant’s transcendental
philosophy, it will be helpful to recount briefly Kant’s own account of
sensibility and understanding. According to Kant, “Our cognition arises
from two fundamental sources in the mind, the first of which is the reception
of representations (the receptivity of impressions), the second the faculty for
cognizing an object by means of these representations (spontaneity of
concepts); through the former an object is given to us, through the later it
is thought in relation to that representation” (A/B). The faculty of
receptivity is, of course, for human beings the faculty of sensibility, while
the faculty of spontaneity, able to bring forth representations, is the faculty
of understanding (A/B). Kant connects these faculties with distinct
elements – intuitions and concepts – but he is also very careful to say that
for us, intuitions must always be sensible, while another being, for example,
God, might have access to intellectual intuitions. Insofar as both sensibility
and understanding are essentially involved in receiving or utilizing represen-
tations, Kant adds the rather tantalizing note that they may belong to some
common but, to us, unknown root (A/B).
The distinction between intuitions and concepts is thus also of great
importance and parallels the distinction between sensibility and

Ultimately, Maimon believes that Kant controverts the views of dogmatic metaphysics. (See his
response to the review mentioned above, Berlinisches Journal für Aufklärung [] : pp. ff.
Reprinted in Maimon, Versuch über die Transzendentalphilosophie, f.) I will say more on this
point later.

In another sense, Maimon’s Versuch is one of the most important post-Kantian works and sheds light
on the philosophy of Fichte and Hegel. But in this chapter, I will mainly be interested in looking
backwards, focusing on earlier German philosophy. In my view, the connection between Maimon
and Leibniz and the rationalist tradition has not received the attention it deserves. A few exceptions
are the essays by Freudenthal and Yakira contained in Freudenthal (ed.), Salomon Maimon: Rational
Dogmatist, Empirical Skeptic, and Thielke, “Rationalism, Empiricism, and Skepticism: The Curious
Case of Maimon’s ‘Coalition-System’”; also worthy of mention is Cassirer’s treatment of Maimon in
his Die Nachkantischen Systeme (vol.  of Das Erkenntnisproblem).

The distinction between sensibility and understanding is actually more complex and difficult than
often thought. An excellent discussion is to be found in Sellars, Science and Metaphysics, ch. .
Brandon C. Look 
understanding. On the standard and most obvious reading, the matter of
intuitions are singular representations or representations of individual
objects, and intuitions are said to stand in a direct or immediate relation to
an object. While Kant is not as clear on this issue as one might hope, it is
presumably the case that intuitions have an immediate relation to objects
precisely because they rest upon the given impressions or affections (A/B).
And famously, for Kant, space and time are the forms of sensible intuition;
that is, space and time are primitive; all sensible intuitions are representations
in space and time. Concepts, on the other hand, are general; they stand in an
indirect or mediate relation to individuals and can be attributed to a multi-
tude of individuals. Whereas intuitions rest upon affections of the mind,
Kant claims that concepts rest upon functions by which many objects are
unified in thought. Thus, concepts have an indirect relation to objects
because they are representations of representations.
For Kant, the human mind is concerned principally with the act of
judgment, and judgments depend upon the interplay of intuitions and
concepts and thus on the interplay of the faculties of sensibility and under-
standing. On his view, in a judgment, a concept attributable to many
individuals comprehends a given representation, and this is what allows us
to state truthfully and with objective validity, “x is F.” This need not be
limited to particular judgments either; that is, judgments in which a concept
is brought to bear upon some this. For Kant, the same is true in universal
judgments, as is evident in his example “All bodies are divisible.” In this case,
we have the concept of divisibility, which comprehends our representations
of all bodies that come or could come before us. The main point, however,
should be clear: our cognition depends upon sensibility and understanding
working in conjunction and operating upon sensible intuitions and
concepts. And the distinctions between sensibility and intuitions, on the
one hand, and understanding and concepts, on the other, rest upon the
distinctions between representations that are immediate and those that are
mediate, and between singular representations and those that comprehend
many particulars. Such differences are absolute – they do not admit of
degree – and they are not, as Kant would have us think, the nebulous
distinctions operative in Leibniz’s epistemology.
In the short and oft-overlooked Appendix to the Transcendental Analytic
of the Critique of Pure Reason, entitled, “On the amphiboly of the concepts of

This interpretation would have to be finessed a bit, since Kant also considers space and time to be
not only forms of intuition, but also objects of intuition. But for my purposes here, this will be good
enough.
 Maimon and Kant on the Nature of the Mind
reflection through the confusion of the empirical use of the understanding
with transcendental,” Kant attributes the principal features and failings of
Leibniz’s metaphysics to his failure to understand the real nature of human
cognitive faculties. The general criticism is that Leibniz fails to distinguish
sensibility and understanding as two distinct faculties of the mind; the more
particular claims are that Leibniz regards sensation as merely a confused form
of representation and he regards the phenomena simply as confused intellec-
tual representations of the things in themselves. According to Kant, in fact,
the distinctive features of the Leibnizian metaphysics are ultimately traceable
to Leibniz’s inability to determine to which stem of cognition our claims
pertain, and this leads Leibniz to commit the fallacy of amphiboly – in this
case, by saying things that are true of objects of the understanding that need
not be true of intuitions or objects of sensory experience.
The question of the role and interplay of sensibility and understanding is
just one of the many issues for philosophers grappling with the fundamental
problem of the relation of mind and world, of the epistemological problem of
the possibility of our knowledge of the world. As will be familiar, Kant
rephrases the issue in a unique way, focusing on how pure a priori concepts
of the understanding could apply to objects given to us in sensory experience.
The very possibility of metaphysics and science, with their claims to necessity,
depends upon this connection. In setting up his transcendental deduction of
the pure concepts of the understanding, Kant famously draws on a distinction
common in law at the time between questions of fact and questions of
lawfulness or right; that is, as Kant puts it, between the quid facti and the
quid juris (Af/Bf). The latter kind of question requires a “deduction” in
legal jargon – hence, of course, the “transcendental deduction.” As Maimon
makes very clear in his Versuch, Kant focuses on the question of right and
simply presupposes the question of fact as already settled. In other words,
Kant is concerned principally with the question: By what right or how is it
possible that pure concepts are brought to bear on sensory experience? He
assumes, Maimon believes, that it is obviously the case that the categories are
in fact operative in our experience of the world; he assumes that pure concepts
of the understanding are brought to bear on our sensory intuitions.
. Maimon and the Cognizing Mind

According to a fairly standard and simplistic narrative in the history of
philosophy, Kant somehow synthesized rationalism and empiricism in his
Critical philosophy. And as with all standard and simplistic narratives,
there is a degree of truth in this claim. Of course, when scholars of the
Brandon C. Look 
history of philosophy hear such a claim, they are likely to draw deep
breaths, say “Yes, but . . .,” and engage in a bit of pedantry. Nevertheless,
let us begin with this narrative and then consider the philosophy of
Maimon, for he explicitly sets himself up as someone who takes the
Kantian transcendental philosophy and joins it with the truths of dogmatic
metaphysics and Humean skepticism. Indeed, the term he uses in his
Lebensgeschichte (Autobiography) for his own philosophy is a “Coalitionssys-
tem [coalition system].” Describing his first encounter with Kant’s first
Critique and his past history of having been able to think himself into the
philosophical works he had studied, Maimon writes, “Since I had already
made the systems of Spinoza, Hume and Leibniz my own in this way,
it was natural that I ought to contemplate a coalition system.” Indeed, he
will later describe himself as a rationalist dogmatist and empirical skeptic.
Insofar as Kant would presumably never have described himself in this
manner, it seems clear that there is a fair degree of logical space between
Maimon’s philosophy and Kant’s. Now, as has already been said, the main
focus of this chapter is the Leibnizianism of Maimon’s philosophy, but
Spinoza and Hume will show up again as well.
As Maimon puts it in the introduction to the Versuch, his goal is to
present the most important truths from the science of transcendental
philosophy as drawn from “the great Kant,” without at the same time
following him blindly. “I do indeed follow the aforementioned acute
philosopher,” he writes, “but, as the unbiased reader will see, I do not
plagiarize him; as much as I can, I try to explain him while also comment-
ing upon him.” Yet, as mentioned earlier, Maimon is also somewhat
cagey in his self-description, and he signals four points of disagreement for
the discerning reader:
() the difference between mere cognition a priori and pure cognition a
priori;
() the derivation of the origin of synthetic propositions from the
incompleteness of our cognition;
() a doubt concerning the quid facti question, where Hume’s point
appears to be unanswerable; and
() a different answer to the quid juris question and the explanation of the
possibility of metaphysics through a reduction of intuitions to their
elements, which Maimon calls “ideas of the understanding
[Verstandsideen].”
 
Lebensgeschichte, p. . Versuch, p. .
 Maimon and Kant on the Nature of the Mind
While not all of these points will be discussed here, it is helpful to have
them in mind for what follows.
According to Maimon, the quid juris question is among the most
important questions for philosophy. Further, this question shows that
the explanation of the relation between soul and body and the explanation
of the origin of the world from an intelligence amount to the same thing.
This is in itself a striking point, and one that we will come back to in a
moment. For we will see that Maimon’s skepticism with regard to both the
Kantian quid juris and quid facti questions leads him to an account of the
role of the divine and infinite intellect as a guarantor of the experiential
claims of finite, cognizing, human minds.
Maimon begins his account of the nature of the cognizing mind in a
manner very reminiscent of Kant. On Maimon’s view, a limited or finite
cognitive faculty (eingeschränktes Erkenntnisvermögen) needs both matter
and form. Matter is the particular in the object “through which it is
cognized and distinguished from all other objects”; form, on the other
hand, is the universal that can belong to a class of objects. Thus, the form
of sensibility is the mode of the cognitive faculty in relation to sensible
objects; the form of the understanding is the mode of operation with
respect to objects in general or to objects of the understanding. While
this point might sound like Kant, it should be clear that it is not exactly the
same thing – at least not if we interpret Kant as endorsing the thesis that
sensibility and understanding are separate faculties or “stems” of cognition.
For Maimon’s position makes possible the claim that, when our mind is
concerned with particulars, it requires a certain form of sensibility; when
concerned with universals, a certain form of the understanding. Maimon
also appears close to the Kantian account of the cognizing mind in his
consideration of the nature of consciousness. “Consciousness first arises,”
Maimon tells us, “when the imagination takes a multitude of homoge-
neous sensible representations together, orders them according to its forms
(succession in space and time), and forms from this a single intuition.”
This can perhaps be best understood in the Kantian terms of the synthesis
of the manifold or the synthesis of apprehension. Likewise, his account
of the role played by the understanding also appears Kantian: “Finally, the
understanding comes along. Its job is to relate different given sensible
objects (intuitions) to each other through pure concepts a priori, or to
make them into real objects of the understanding through pure concepts of
   
Ibid., p. . Ibid., p. . Ibid., p. . For example, see A.
Brandon C. Look 
the understanding.” While Maimon does not emphasize the nature of
judgment in the way that Kant does, nevertheless the student of Kant will
be lapsing into her own dogmatic slumber at this point.
Yet Maimon adds a conceptual epicycle to his broadly Kantian account
of the mind. He writes: “So, sensibility delivers the differentials to a
determined consciousness; the imagination produces a finite (determined)
object of intuition; from the relations of these different differentials that
are its objects, the understanding produces the relation of the sensible
objects that arise from them [i.e., the differentials]”. The jarring thing
here is the reference to “differentials,” which will come to occupy an
important role in Maimon’s philosophy and points to his conception of
the relation between sensibility and understanding. What exactly does
Maimon mean by these “differentials”? On a first pass, it would seem that
the differentials are simply that in sensibility which grounds individuation.
Now, this kind of reading does make sense, given what Maimon had said
about space and time being the forms of sensibility and ultimately the
grounds for determining differences between individuals. But then Maimon
says this: “These differentials of objects are the so-called noumena;
the objects themselves that arise from them are the phenomena . . .
These noumena are ideas of reason [Vernunftideen] that serve to explain
the origin of objects according to certain rules of the understanding.”
If we take Maimon’s text very literally at this point, it appears that he
has just said, in the space of a few sentences, the following:
(P) Sensibility delivers differentials.
(P) Differentials are the noumena.
(P) The noumena are ideas of reason.
(C?) Sensibility delivers the noumena.
(C?) Sensibility delivers ideas of reason.
Clearly, something is going wrong here. But there is a fairly straightfor-
ward solution; this is not such a simplistic argument. Rather, the senses of
“differentials” in (P) and (P) are themselves different, and this allows for
a kind of ambiguity to creep into Maimon’s discussion. All he is saying is
that sensibility offers us – through the forms of space and time – a means
of determining difference or distinctness of concrete particulars; that is,

Versuch, p. .

Lest the reader think that epicycles cannot be added to the Kantian system, since Kant had ushered
in a Copernican revolution of the mind, it should be noted that Copernicus employed epicycles in
his planetary system.
 
Versuch, p. . Ibid.
 Maimon and Kant on the Nature of the Mind
sensibility allows for individuation in terms of space and time. The
grounds themselves for difference and distinctness are the noumena, which
are ideas of reason, for we could never have experiential knowledge of the
grounds themselves. Now, according to Maimon, these differentials
are going to be part of his own positive answer to the quid juris question,
explaining the legitimacy of our application of pure concepts of the
understanding to the world of sense.
Maimon’s fundamental critical point against the Kantian distinction
between sensibility and understanding is that, as two distinct sources of
cognition or faculties of the mind, they cannot actually work together to
give us cognition, for intuitions or the given cannot be subjected to the
laws of the spontaneous faculty of the understanding. In other words,
insofar as sensibility and understanding are considered separate faculties
and by their nature are heterogeneous, it is not at all clear how they could
possibly interact or how the one faculty, the understanding, could subject
the objects of the other to its power. And since this is the case, the Kantian
answer to the quid juris question is doomed to fail. As Maimon puts it:
How in fact can the understanding still subject something that is not in its
power (the given objects) to its power (the rules of the understanding)?
According to the Kantian system, in which sensibility and understanding
are two completely distinct sources of our cognition, this question is . . .
irresolvable; on the other hand, according to the Leibnizian-Wolffian
system, both sensibility and understanding flow from a single cognitive
source. Their difference consists only in the degrees of completeness of the
cognition. And, so, the question can be resolved quite easily.
To illustrate this point, Maimon asks us to consider the concept of cause,
that is, the necessity that b follows from a. In Kant’s system, he claims, it is
inconceivable by what right we can combine necessity, a concept of the
understanding, with determinations of an intuition, that is, succession in
time. Of course, Kant tries to argue that space and time are forms of
intuition and, in fact, a priori representations, which allow us legitimately
to ascribe the a priori concept of necessity to a determined succession of
temporal events. But even if intuitions are a priori, they are still

It should be clear that Maimon’s “ideas of reason” differ from Kant’s technical use of “ideas.”

While Maimon presents himself as differing from Kant on this point, in one important respect he is
on the same side – or at least he will be when the Kantian philosophy is critiqued and rewritten by
Schopenhauer. For both Kant and Maimon believe that individuation or differentiation is
something that one can speak of at the noumenal level; that is, that there are different noumena
that underlie the phenomena. But that is another story for another time.

Versuch, pp. –.
Brandon C. Look 
heterogeneous with concepts, and such a combination of intuitions
and concepts is doomed to failure. Not so in the Leibnizian-Wolffian
philosophy. While space and time are not distinct representations, they
are nevertheless concepts of the understanding of the connections and
relations of things in general, and consequently the representations of
relations among things can be subjected to the rules of the understanding.
Maimon’s criticism of the Kantian distinction between sensibility and
understanding is also connected with a very different view of the nature of
the divine and human intellects. Immediately after his point about the
possibility in the Leibnizian-Wolffian system of applying the concept of
cause to the representations of individual events, he adds a crucial claim
about the nature of the mind: “We assume (at least as an idea) an infinite
intellect [Verstand], for which the forms are at the same time objects of
thought, or that produces from itself all possible kinds of connections and
relations of things (the ideas). Our intellect is just the same, only in a
limited way.” Kant would, of course, vehemently deny this point.
But for Maimon, as for philosophers of the Leibnizian tradition generally,
the human mind differs from the divine mind principally in terms of the
degree of clarity and distinctness of representations and the completeness
of the understanding. He makes a closely related point later in the Versuch:
“Herr Kant asserts that sensibility and understanding are two distinct
faculties [Vermögen]; I assert on the contrary that, whether or not they
have to be considered already in us as two distinct faculties, they have to be
thought by one infinite thinking being as one and the same power and that
sensibility is for us the incomplete understanding.” While Maimon’s
claim that sensibility is for us the incomplete understanding might at first
glance be confusing, he should ultimately be taken to mean nothing more
than that the cognitions of finite beings like us are imperfect or incom-
plete. That is, Maimon holds the view that finite beings bear a special
relation to the infinite intellect of God and that a “perfect” sensory
intuition will simply be a cognition of the sort had by the divine intellect.
And this view is deeply Leibnizian.
A complete explication of Maimon’s positive answer to the quid juris
question would take much more work, more than can be considered in this
chapter. Instead of continuing on this subject, we should turn to another,
related issue, where Maimon signals a point of disagreement with Kant,
namely his (Maimon’s) skepticism with respect to the quid facti question.
 
Ibid., pp. –. Ibid., pp. –.
 Maimon and Kant on the Nature of the Mind
Herr Kant presupposes as undoubted the fact that we have experiential claims
[Erfahrungssätze] (that express necessity) and proves thereby their objective
validity by showing that without them experience would be impossible.
But since experience is possible, because it is according to this presupposition
actual, these concepts have objective reality. I, on the other hand, doubt
the fact itself that we have experiential claims, and so cannot prove their
objective validity in this way, but rather I prove simply the possibility of their
objective validity from objects, not of experience (which are determined in
intuition) but of their limits, which through reason in relation to their
corresponding intuitions are determined as objects, by which the quid juris
question (by which one applies pure concepts to ideas) must cease to apply.
Thus, things can stand in this relation to each other; whether or not they in
fact do stand in this relation to each other remains in question.
It is here, of course, that Maimon holds to the Humean skepticism that is
part of his Coalitionssystem. As he makes clear earlier in the Versuch, he
believes that Kant’s derivation of the pure concepts of the understanding
from the forms of judgment in logic is not above reproach. In the pivotal
case of the concept of cause and its relation to hypothetical judgments, for
example, Maimon asks how logic itself comes upon the peculiar form that,
if one thing is posited, another one must necessarily be posited. We have
presumably abstracted it from its use with real objects, he believes. But this
means that we are still subject to Hume’s challenge.
At the same time, Maimon’s Coalitionssystem appropriates other elements
of Leibnizian metaphysics and epistemology, and not just in the question of
the relation of sensibility and understanding. Indeed, at the end of the
Versuch, Maimon claims that the system that he proposes agrees “most
precisely” with the metaphysical system of Leibniz, “when this is under-
stood correctly.” Or rather, he says he could easily show this, but he believes
it to be unnecessary. So, in what ways should we understand this to be the
case? Maimon immediately goes on to make a claim about an effective
trinity within his system. He writes:
We have here (if I may use the expression) a trinity, God, the world and the
human soul, namely we understand by world just the intellectual world, i.e.
the sum of all possible objects that can be produced by all possible relations
thought by an understanding and by soul, an understanding (a faculty of
thinking) that refers to itself so that all these possible relations can be
 
Ibid., pp. –. Ibid., p. .

Ibid., p. . Of course, Kant will also claim that his Critique of Pure Reason could be considered
the true apology for the philosophy of Leibniz; in other words, if Leibniz had really thought things
through, he would have come up with Kant’s system (OD :). It seems clear to me that
Maimon has a much better claim to being closer in spirit and substance to Leibniz.
Brandon C. Look 
thought by it, but by God, an understanding that actually thinks all these
relations (for otherwise I do not know what I should think of as an
ens realissimum). Thus, these three things are one and the same thing.
On first glance, this might appear to represent very much part of the
“coalition system” – though mainly a coalition between Spinoza and Leibniz.
But there is a way of understanding Leibniz that makes this a perfectly correct
and, in fact, subtle reading of Leibniz. What Maimon means here is that God
as the originary intellect and sole necessary being grounds all other finite
beings; these finite beings are likewise minds or mental beings, which offer or
represent different perspectives on the entire world. Where Maimon says
that the soul is an understanding that refers to itself so that all possible
relations between objects in the world can be thought by it, Leibniz might
simply have said that each mind expresses the entire world from its unique
point of view.
Maimon is nevertheless apparently critical of aspects of Leibniz’s phil-
osophy as well. In a letter to Kant, Maimon tries to offer a criticism of
contemporary discussion of the nature of mental content and attributes a
lot of the blame to Leibniz:
The word “representation” has made much mischief in philosophy, since it
has encouraged people to invent an objective substratum for each mental
event. Leibniz made matters worse with his theory of obscure representations.
I admit the supreme importance of his theory for anthropology. But in a
critique of the cognitive faculty, it is certainly worthless. “Obscure” repre-
sentations are not states of mind (which can only be conscious) but rather of
the body. Leibniz makes use of them only in order to fill in the gaps in the
substantiality of the soul. But I do not believe that any independent thinker
will seriously think he can manage it that way. “Obscure” representations are
merely bridges with which to cross from soul to body and back again (though
Leibniz had good reason to prohibit this passage). (Corr, :–)
Maimon’s reading of Leibniz here is, however, uncharitable, even wrong.
Obscure representations and petites perceptions are not in Leibniz’s system
simply to fill in gaps in his account of the substantiality of the soul – or at
least this is a very bad way of putting the issue. They are there to explain

Ibid., pp. –.

It would be wrong to think that all of Maimon’s readings of Leibniz are similarly interesting and deep. For
example, in a footnote at the opening of the second chapter, Maimon claims that Leibniz’s differential
calculus is the result of his monadological metaphysics. Certainly, Leibniz’s reflections on the labyrinths of
the continuum and freedom, his considerations on the nature of infinity, are connected to his views on
the nature of substance. But if anything, his mathematical views influenced his metaphysical views; his
mathematics did not follow from a monadological metaphysics that had not even been expressed yet.
 Maimon and Kant on the Nature of the Mind
the nature of substance as fundamentally a mental being, a being in which
not all representations need to be conscious to the subject, but also a being
that expresses all things in the universe. Indeed, speaking in metaphysical
rigor, Leibniz’s main metaphysical theses, the ontology of simple, mind-
like substances and the theory of preestablished harmony, can only work
together if there are unconscious representations. Now, one might think
that Maimon has Leibniz completely dead to rights here, for representa-
tions are being used to assume some kind of substratum for them. But
given the way in which Maimon had previously appropriated Leibniz’s
philosophy, this is an odd way for him to express his criticism. After all, we
could just as easily say that the monads express the entire world insofar as
they are the results of God’s emanative effects or the divine fulgurations,
and that this union with the infinite intellect is what Maimon is arguing
for. Consider these passages from the “Monadology”:
Thus God alone is the primitive unity or the first simple substance; all
created or derivative monads are products, and are generated, so to speak, by
continual fulgurations of the divinity from moment to moment, limited by
the receptivity of the creature, to which it is essential to be limited. (§)
Monads are limited, not as to their objects, but with respect to the modifi-
cations of their knowledge of them. Monads all go confusedly to infinity, to
the whole; but they are limited and differentiated by the degrees of their
distinct perceptions. (§)
In other words, Maimon’s particular criticism in the passage cited earlier is
rather stunning, because Maimon and Leibniz are actually very close – on a
particular reading of Leibniz that emphasizes his Neoplatonism. That is,
just as Maimon wished to emphasize the trinity of God, world, and soul in
the passage quoted from Versuch, a trinity made possible because God
grounds all possible relations among things in thought, so Leibniz regards
all monads as emanations of the divine being.
. Kant’s Response to Maimon

The focus of this chapter has been limited to Maimon’s criticism of the
Kantian distinction of sensibility and understanding. And the reason for
this focus is simply the centrality of this distinction in Kant’s philosophy
and its relevance for his critique of earlier rationalist systems of thought.
It should not be forgotten, however, that the nature of Kant’s distinction
 
Leibniz, Philosophical Essays, p. . Ibid., pp. –.
Brandon C. Look 
between sensibility and understanding is not an entirely settled question in
the scholarly realm. For example, in contrast to the rather standard account
presented in the first section, it should be noted that some have argued that
the correct interpretation of Kant’s distinction between sensibility and
understanding requires that they be thought of as modally distinct, not
as distinct faculties at all. If this were the case, then it would seem that
much of Maimon’s criticism loses its force. However, this view is hard to
square with the criticism of Maimon that Kant himself gives in his letter to
Marcus Herz of May , :
Herr Maimon’s theory consists basically in the contention that an under-
standing (indeed, the human understanding) not only is a faculty of
thinking, as our understanding and perhaps that of all creatures essentially
is, but is actually a faculty of intuition, where thinking is only a way of
bringing the manifold of intuition (which is obscure because of our limita-
tions) into clear consciousness. I, on the other hand, conceive of the
understanding as a special faculty [besonderes Vermögen] and ascribe to it
the concept of an object in general (a concept that even the clearest
consciousness of our intuition would not at all disclose). In other words,
I ascribe to the understanding the synthetic unity of apperception, through
which alone the manifold of intuition (of whose every feature I may never-
theless be particularly conscious), in a unified consciousness, is brought to
the representation of an object in general (whose concept is then deter-
mined by means of that manifold). (Corr, :)
Of course, this passage does not entirely settle the matter. But I take it that
when Kant describes the understanding as a “besonderes Vermögen,” he does
mean that it is more than just modally distinct from sensibility. In other
words, when left to explain on his terms the nature of sensibility and
understanding, Kant invariably presents sensibility and understanding as
distinct mental faculties, separate capacities of the mind operating on distinct
kinds of mental objects.
Kant sees correctly that Maimon’s criticism is also deeper and broader
than just this. In the Herz letter, he gives a very accurate summary of
Maimon’s demands of him:
How do I explain the possibility of agreement between a priori intuitions
and my a priori concepts, if each has its specifically different origin, since
this agreement is given as a fact but the legitimacy or the necessity of the
agreement of two such heterogeneous manners of representation is

I am thinking here, for example, of Franks, All or Nothing, pp. –. In setting out this reading of
Kant’s distinction between sensibility and understanding, Franks makes explicit reference to
Maimon’s critique of Kant.
 Maimon and Kant on the Nature of the Mind
incomprehensible [?] . . . [H]ow can I even prove the necessity of these
functions of the understanding whose existence is again merely a fact, since
that necessity has to be presupposed if we are to subject things, however
conceived, to those functions [?] To this I answer: All of this takes place in
relation to an experiential knowledge that is only possible for us under these
conditions, a subjective consideration, to be sure, but one that is objectively
valid as well, because the objects here are not things in themselves but mere
appearances; consequently, the form in which they are given depends
on us, – on the one hand, in its subjective aspect, [objects are] dependent
on the specific character of our kind of intuition; on the other hand, they
are dependent on the uniting of the manifold in a consciousness, that is, on
what is required for the thinking and cognizing of objects by our under-
standing. Only under these conditions, therefore, can we have experiences
of those objects; and consequently, if intuitions (of objects of appearance)
did not agree with these conditions, those objects would be nothing for us,
that is, not objects of cognition at all, neither cognition of ourselves nor of
other things. (Corr, :–)
In other words, Kant sees clearly the challenge to the quid facti question as
well as Maimon’s approach to the quid juris question; he also sees the
criticism of his distinction between sensibility and understanding. But in
his brief response to Herz, Kant does not offer an explicit defense of the
distinction between sensibility and understanding. Rather, he asserts that
we do experience the world and that this experience is only possible if the
mind works in a certain way, namely through the conjunction of intuitions
and concepts. In other words, he doubles down on the indubitability of his
answer to the quid facti question, which is precisely one of the things that
Maimon challenges.
Nevertheless, Kant’s exchange with Herz also reveals an aspect of his
theory of mind that is not given sufficient attention by Maimon in his
critique of Kant and that is perhaps central to understanding why Kant
would hold to the distinction between sensibility and understanding. At the
same time, it can be seen to reveal a confusion with respect to his under-
standing of Leibniz. As mentioned in passing earlier, it is my view that Kant
does not give much of an argument for the distinction between sensibility
and understanding; it seems to be merely asserted that we have a passive
faculty and an active faculty, a faculty that receives the given and a faculty
that subsumes the given to universal and necessary concepts. But part of the
reason that, according to Kant, there must be separate faculties of sensibility
and understanding has to do with what he terms the synthetic unity of
apperception, which brings it about that the manifold of intuition is unified
and can therefore represent the external world with objective validity.
Brandon C. Look 
In other words, in Kant’s theory of mind, absent an active faculty, the
manifold of intuition is just an instance of confused representation. It is
perhaps an instance of philosophical and psychological projection,
then, that this is the very view of sensibility that Kant attributes to Leibniz:
“sensibility was only a confused kind of representation for him”
(A/B). In fact, however, Leibniz distinguishes sensations from mere
perceptions in terms of their clarity; that is, a sensation is a clearer repre-
sentation or perception. As he writes in § of the “Principles of Nature
and Grace”, “the soul itself knows [connoit] the things it perceives only so far
as it has distinct and heightened [revelées] perceptions.” Not only that,
Leibniz believes that a sensation is our awareness or consciousness of an
external object. So, in a very important sense, Leibniz does not think of
sensation as confused mental representation at all.
Later, in his letter to Herz, Kant returns to the question of the nature of
sensibility and understanding. He suggests that Maimon’s understanding
of Leibniz is wrong, and he gives an interpretation of Leibniz’s preestab-
lished harmony that is, unsurprisingly, Kantian.
It is difficult to guess the thoughts that may have hovered in the mind of a
deep thinker and that he himself could not make entirely clear. Neverthe-
less, I am quite convinced that Leibniz, in his pre-established harmony
(which he, like Baumgarten after him, made very general), had in mind not
the harmony of two different natures, namely, sense and understanding,
but that of two faculties belonging to the same nature, in which sensibility
and understanding harmonize to form experiential knowledge. If we
wanted to make judgments about their origin – an investigation that of
course lies wholly beyond the limits of human reason – we could name
nothing beyond our divine creator; once they are given, however, we are
fully able to explain their power of making a priori judgments (that is, to
answer the question, quid juris). (Corr, :)
Insofar as Kant had criticized Leibniz for failing to distinguish the faculties
of sensibility and understanding, it is rather jarring to see him suggest that,
properly understood, Leibniz’s theory of preestablished harmony is really a
theory of the harmony of the faculties of sensibility and understanding.
If we take Kant at his word here, it would seem that he is contradicting his
earlier criticism of Leibniz. But this criticism of Leibniz’s philosophy of
mind is at the core of his critique of dogmatic metaphysics itself.
There are many ways to understand Leibniz’s preestablished harmony,
but at first glance, Kant’s reading would not appear to be one of them.
 
Leibniz, Philosophical Essays, p. . See, for example, New Essays, II.xix.–.
 Maimon and Kant on the Nature of the Mind
The view that Leibniz pressed in his popular writings is that there is a
harmony between mind and body, and this harmony is a result of there not
being any true interaction among substances in the world. Thus, the mind
operates according to its laws, and the body acts according to its laws, and
both are in perfect conformity and harmony. Likewise, according to
Leibniz, there is a harmony between the mechanical explanation of the
phenomenal world, according to efficient causes, and a teleological explan-
ation of the world, according to final causes. The former represents the
kingdom of nature, the latter the kingdom of grace. There is also the
universal harmony that exists between all substances and their expressions
of the world. But the crucial aspect of Leibnizian preestablished harmony is
that each of the two realms or spheres is explanatorily sufficient and
isolated. The idea that they harmonize insofar as they work in conjunction
in an individual, as sensibility and understanding do in Kant’s theory of
mind, belies Leibniz’s original philosophical intent. Nevertheless, Kant does
appear to acknowledge that Leibniz does have the conceptual resources to
distinguish sensibility from understanding, to differentiate representations
of particulars from representations of universals, and that Leibniz’s distinc-
tions do not rely purely on the relative clarity of the representations.
Kant is, of course, correct that it is difficult to guess the thoughts that
may hover in the mind of a deep thinker. And we should ourselves be
careful in interpreting Kant on this or any other issue. But one might
wonder if Maimon had not scored a victory for Leibniz by forcing Kant to
see that there was a kind of distinction between sensibility and understand-
ing in his philosophy all along. Kant might still be justified in his general
critique of dogmatic metaphysics: that it makes claims about things that go
beyond our experience, claims that are by that very fact illegitimate in a
true metaphysics. But he might not be justified in his simplistic diagnosis
of the origin of the error. If this is the case, then Maimon succeeded in
getting Kant to recognize something deeper about his own relation to his
predecessors, while grappling with the criticisms of one of his most astute
contemporaries.
 
Lambert and Kant on Truth

Thomas Sturm
Philosophy without history of philosophy,

if not empty or blind, is at least dumb.
(Wilfrid Sellars, Science and Metaphysics, p. )
Different reasons motivate us to study Kant’s forerunners or contemporaries.
First, looking at these thinkers can help us to understand obscure Kantian
notions. Second, they were often involved in debates that Kant also reacted
to. Studying their works can enable us to judge whether or not he was up to
the state of the art of his time, and whether he responded reasonably to it.
Third, by contextualizing Kant’s reasoning, we may avoid anachronistic
interpretations that force him to answer all too directly to present debates,
ignoring differences between his and our agendas, assumptions and method-
ologies. All these motives can help to better apply the principle of charity to
Kant’s works – and to reveal what, if anything, we can learn from him for
today. These motives also guide the present comparison between Kant’s
understanding of the concept of truth and that of one of his most esteemed
contemporaries, the philosopher-scientist Johann Heinrich Lambert.
What is Kant’s account of truth? Building upon interpretations of
issues such as his thing-in-itself/appearance distinction, the distinction
between primary and secondary qualities, the concept-ladenness of experi-
ence, his account of the unity of judgment or his claims about the
necessary relation between the conditions of knowledge and the conditions
of objects of knowledge, philosophers have ascribed to Kant a breathtaking
variety of competing views. They range from epistemic, coherence and
soft correspondence accounts of truth to similarities with Tarski’s

Posy, ‘The Language of Appearances and Things in Themselves’; Putnam, Reason, Truth and
History, pp. –; Hacking, Representing and Intervening, pp. –; Moran, ‘Hilary Putnam
and Immanuel Kant: Two “Internal Realists”?’

Walker, The Coherence Theory of Truth: Realism, Anti-Realism, Idealism; Mensch, ‘Kant on Truth’.

Clark, ‘Why Kant Couldn’t Be an Anti-Realist’; Abela, ‘Putnam and Kant on Realism’; Van Cleve,
Problems from Kant, ch. ; and Abela, Kant’s Empirical Realism.

 Lambert and Kant on Truth
semantic theory and comparisons with pluralism. Such interpretations
have also been connected to the comprehensive issue of the meaning and
justification of Kant’s doctrines of transcendental idealism and empirical
realism. His claims concerning the concept of truth can seemingly be made
to fit with all of these readings, and no consensus is in sight.
Rather than starting from any of the issues just mentioned, I shall lay
new ground here by analysing Kant’s views against the background of
Lambert’s. Admittedly, Kant does not explicitly refer to Lambert on the
topic of truth. My aim here is not to prove causal influences, though there
are various pieces of circumstantial evidence for them. We know that they
thought highly of each other. Kant was acquainted with Lambert’s Neues
Organon (New Organon) and with the Anlage zur Architectonic (Appendix
on Architectonics). Also, he built upon some of Lambert’s ideas – for
instance, the demand to reform metaphysics, the notion of scientific
knowledge as being distinguished by its systematicity, his concepts of an
architectonic of the sciences, of phenomenology and semblance, and the
notion of postulates. In the present context, it is useful to note that
Lambert’s Neues Organon is, as its full title indicates, devoted to the
‘investigation and designation of the truth, and its difference from error
and semblance’. Kant, in turn, divides the Transcendental Logic of the first
Critique into an ‘Analytic’ and a ‘Dialectic’, characterized as a ‘logic of
truth’ and a ‘logic of semblance’ (Logik des Scheins), respectively. Like
Lambert, Kant distinguishes error or falsity from semblance: an error can
be eliminated by cognitive insight; semblance, however, can be understood
but keeps on haunting our minds. Needless to say, even if Lambert

Prauss, ‘Zum Wahrheitsproblem bei Kant’; Hanna, ‘Kant, Truth, and Human Nature’.

Sher, ‘On the Possibility of a Substantive Theory of Truth’; Vanzo, ‘Kant on the Nominal
Definition of Truth’.

Between  and , they expressed strong sympathy for each other’s ideas in letters. Kant
welcomed Lambert’s invitation to work jointly on the reform of metaphysics (Corr, :). So they
commented on each other’s publications on cosmology and metaphysics and discussed time and
space, or the relation between the form and matter of cognition. One should not say, however, that
Lambert was the first critical philosopher; cf. Kant’s own assessment: ‘Lambert analyzed reason, but
the critique is still missing’ (R , ca. –). Rather, Kant came to distinguish himself from
Lambert’s aim and method concerning metaphysics by saying that Lambert merely analysed
concepts rather than dealing with the issue of their objective validity (R , ca. –). For
more, see Watkins’s contribution in this volume.

Johann Heinrich Lambert, Neues Organon (), reprinted in vols. – of Philosophische Schriften;
Lambert, Anlage zur Architectonic (, but written in ), reprinted in vol.  of Philosophische
Schriften.

Cf. Sturm, Kant und die Wissenschaften vom Menschen, ch. ; Laywine, ‘Kant and Lambert on
Geometrical Postulates in the Reform of Metaphysics’; Motta, Die Postulate des empirischen Denkens
überhaupt, pp. –.
Thomas Sturm 
influenced Kant concerning the notion of truth, it is well known that Kant
rarely leaves important ideas as he finds them. A careful analysis of their
views reveals both proximity and distance.
I will seek, therefore, to improve our understanding of Kant’s views with
an appropriate contextualization. To see what can go wrong if we do not
start this way, it is helpful to have a major present-day interpretation at
hand. I have chosen the most widely discussed (and philosophically intri-
guing) reading, namely Hilary Putnam’s (section ). After that, I shall
outline Lambert’s account of truth (section ) in order both to clarify the
interpretation of an important argument of Kant’s (section ) and to draw
conclusions for Kant’s understanding of truth and its relation to today’s
debates (section ).
. Putnam’s Kant
Many current discussions of Kant’s concept of truth have been influenced
by Putnam’s claim that Kant is opposed to ‘metaphysical’ realism, that he
is best read as having been the ‘first internal realist’ or that his internal
realism is close to if not identical with Kant’s transcendental idealism.
Internal realism is a view held by the middle Putnam, from ca.  to the
mid-s. Later, he gave it up, adopting a moderate, commonsensical
realism, but that’s irrelevant here. What matters is that he viewed Kant
that way and that many interpreters keep asking themselves whether this is
right or wrong – rather than considering, for instance, whether the
question might not, at least in part, be ill-posed.

Another important context is Kant’s relation to Wolff’s account of truth; see Rosenkoetter, ‘Truth
Criteria and the Very Project of a Transcendental Logic’. I agree with many of Rosenkoetter’s
points. It would take more space than I have here to argue whether Wolff or Lambert is more
relevant to Kant, and, as said, my purpose is more analytic than causal anyhow.

Putnam, The Many Faces of Realism, p. ; cf. Putnam, Reason, Truth, and History, p. ; Putnam,
Realism with a Human Face, ch. .

Putnam, ‘Sense, Nonsense, and the Senses: An Inquiry into the Powers of the Human Mind’’
Against Moran (in “Hilary Putnam and Immanuel Kant’, p. ), I think the changes go deeper than
mere refinements of internal realism, but this is not the place to discuss this.

For instance, see Clark, ‘Why Kant Couldn’t Be an Anti-Realist’; Abela, ‘Putnam and Kant on
Realism’; Abela, Kant’s Empirical Realism; Hanna, ‘Kant, Truth, and Human Nature’; Mensch,
‘Kant on Truth’; Moran, ‘Hilary Putnam and Immanuel Kant’; see also Brown, ‘Internal Realism:
Transcendental Idealism?’; Strawson, ‘The Problem of Realism and the A Priori’; Allais, ‘Kant’s
Transcendental Idealism and Contemporary Anti-Realism’; Posada Kubissa, ‘Sobre Kant, Putnam y
el realismo interno’. Posy (in ‘The Language of Appearances and Things in Themselves’) and
Stevenson and Walker (in ‘Empirical Realism and Transcendental Anti-Realism’) refer in their
interpretations to Michael Dummett more than to Putnam, but the issues involved are mostly
the same.
 Lambert and Kant on Truth
Internal and metaphysical realism are views about the concept of truth
(and about ontology and science). Putnam depicts Kant – and others in
modern philosophy – as being engaged in a debate over whether a metaphys-
ical theory of truth, reality and science is viable, or whether some internalist
account is to be preferred. According to the metaphysical realist: (i) truth
consists in correspondence with facts, where the facts are strictly mind-
independent and the correspondence relation is characterized, as it were,
from a God’s-eye point of view; (ii) the world consists of a ‘fixed totality of
mind-independent objects’; and (iii) there is one true, complete and abso-
lutely mind-independent description of the world, which science aims at.
The internal realist rejects all three of these points. I will focus primarily on
(i), though (ii) will play a role too. Condition (iii) can mostly be ignored here.
For Putnam the internal realist, truth consists in being justifiable under
optimal epistemic conditions: ‘() . . . truth is independent of justification
here and now, but not independent of all justification. To claim a
statement is true is to claim it could be justified. () truth is stable or
“convergent”; if both a statement and its negation could be justified, even
if conditions were as ideal as one could hope to make them, there is no
sense in thinking of the statement as having a truth-value.’ One conse-
quence of this theory, also called the ‘idealization theory’, is that there can
be no radically justification-transcendent truths. But, the correspondence
theorist says, there may be facts we might never know, even under optimal
epistemic conditions. Consider facts about space-time regions too distant
for information about them to ever reach us, or facts about computation-
ally intractable problems, such as finding the optimal moves for an average
chess game, which would take more time than the approximately  billion
years since the big bang (for about thirty moves with about twenty options
each, even Deep Blue would need , billion years to calculate the
result). Believing that there are facts here nonetheless means accepting
epistemic humility. This makes the correspondence theory attractive: it
reflects the robust realism that most of us share before we enter philosophy
seminars or read the relevant articles on the Internet.
However, according to Putnam, the correspondence theory also requires
something else, namely that we can spell out what the correspondence
relation between true statements and facts consists in. Without an appro-
priate underlying metaphysics, the theory would be trivial or useless. Such
a metaphysics, however, is hard to provide. Putnam claims that it would

Putnam, Reason, Truth, and History, pp. f and f; Realism, p. .
 
Putnam, Reason, Truth, and History, p. . Gigerenzer, Gut feelings, pp. f.
Thomas Sturm 
require the assumption of a ‘fixed totality of mind-independent objects’
(ideally to be described by science). In his view, the early modern debate
over the distinction between primary and secondary qualities of material
objects was an influential attempt to give substance to what a metaphysics
of mind-independent objects could look like, an attempt to single out
those of our representations which are perfect ‘copies’ of objects (or their
properties). But, as Berkeley’s criticism of Locke had shown, the distinc-
tion cannot be clearly drawn. There is no way of determining what
properties things have completely independent of our perception.
In Putnam’s view, several twentieth-century theories of reference tried to
fix the relation between language and reality to provide an account of
the correspondence relation, but failed in different ways (which we need
not discuss here). Briefly put, you should prefer nailing jelly to the wall, or
having your fingernails torn out, to accepting the job of fixing the corres-
pondence relation. The correspondence theory is either trivial or inexplic-
able, and useless in either case. Such considerations bring Putnam to
conclude that it should be replaced by an epistemic account of truth:
someone’s telling us that they want us to know the truth tells us really
nothing as long as we have no idea what standards of rational acceptability
the person adheres to: what they consider a rational way to pursue an
inquiry, what their standards of objectivity are, when they consider it
rational to terminate an inquiry, what grounds they will regard as providing
good reason for accepting one verdict or another on whatever sort of
question they might be interested in.
Now, what are Putnam’s reasons for reading Kant as an internalist? First,
he views Kant as agreeing with Berkeley that ‘what Locke said about
secondary qualities is true of all qualities’; this allegedly brought Kant to
think that ‘[n]othing at all we say about any object describes the object as it is
“in itself”, independently of its effect on us’. Second, there is a well-known
passage at the beginning of the Transcendental Analytic where Kant argues
that more than a nominal definition of truth in terms of correspondence is
impossible (A/B–A/B; cf. JL, :–). Call this the ‘impossibility
argument’. I will return to a close analysis of it in section . Here it suffices
to note that Putnam uses this argument to ascribe to Kant the view that,
while truth can be nominally defined as a correspondence or ‘agreement’
(Übereinstimmung) between cognition (Erkenntnis) and its object, a ‘real’ or
substantive definition of the correspondence relation is impossible. Putnam
  
Putnam, Reason, Truth, and History, pp. –. Ibid., p. . Ibid., p. .
 Lambert and Kant on Truth
here brings the distinction between appearances and things in themselves
into play: only if the correspondence theory were accompanied by a meta-
physics that somehow fixes a one-to-one connection between appearances
and things in themselves could the theory be informative; but because of
what Putnam thinks about the impossibility of explaining the notion of a
thing in itself through Lockean primary qualities, and because of Kant’s
frequent claims about the unknowability of things in themselves, such a
metaphysics cannot be provided. Hence, Kant cannot be a metaphysical
realist; he must be an internal realist.
More positively put, Putnam thinks that what the Critique tries to bring
to light are justification criteria that tell us, in the long run, which
statements are true and which ones are not. Thus the Transcendental
Analytic, with its account of the principles of the understanding, provides
necessary and at the same time completely general conditions of the truth
of our judgements: a judgement cannot violate those principles without
losing all content, all reference to objects (A/B; cf. Pro, :).
(This statement actually needs clarification; see sections  and .) More-
over, Kant argues in the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic that we
must also aim to unify all our knowledge claims in systematic theories by
means of taxonomies and hierarchically organized laws of nature, and that
these theoretical frameworks provide a sufficient criterion or ‘touchstone
[Probierstein]’ (A/B) for determining which knowledge claims are
(at least approximately or in the long run) true.
What should one think of this reading? Many things should be said,
but I need not repeat all the criticisms others have made. Two points in
brief. First, the whole issue of the primary/secondary qualities distinction
is very low on Kant’s agenda. When he brings it up, it is primarily
in order to compare – and distinguish – the subjectivity of secondary
qualities from the subjectivity of the forms of space and time (A/B–
A/B). Kant’s talk of a ‘thing in itself’ is not meant to be an update of
Lockean views of things considered solely with respect to their primary
qualities. More generally, it is unclear that the correspondence theory
must be wedded to the idea that some of our representations are ‘copies’
of things or properties, or that we must be able to give a description
of a ‘fixed totality of mind-independent objects’. Second, it can be
argued that Kant would not want to equate truth with rational accept-
ability under optimal epistemic circumstances. For instance, while

Ibid., p. .
Thomas Sturm 
Putnam has at points viewed the notion of an unknowable ‘thing in itself’
as incoherent, Kant clearly does not.
Of course, certain views Kant accepts, such as the famous ‘Copernican
turn’ in metaphysics, or his claims about the relation between conditions
of knowledge and conditions of objects of knowledge, or intricacies
regarding the appearance/thing-in-itself distinction, seem to speak in favor
of Putnam’s claim that Kant assumes a mind-dependence of objects and
that he is an internal realist after all. Accordingly, several interpreters keep
the issue alive. But all these views may put the cart before the horse, as
these debates are all about Kant’s epistemology, or his epistemologically
restricted metaphysics. Reading his account of truth in terms of them
biases the interpretation in favor of epistemic (or coherentist and other
related) accounts. We must realize that his understanding of truth is
conceptually independent of his account of knowledge – and in part even
guides and restricts the latter. The right way to show this is, first, by taking
a close look at Lambert’s account of truth. Against this background,
we will then turn to Kant’s impossibility argument and clarify his under-
standing of truth.
. Lambert on Logical and Metaphysical Truth

Two texts are relevant here: one from Lambert’s Neues Organon part , the
so-called Alethiology, and the other from the Architectonic, chapter X, ‘On
being true and not being true’ (Das Wahr seyn und das Nicht wahr seyn).
The Neues Organon is divided into four main parts. First, there is the
Dianoiology, a doctrine of the laws of truth-preservation the intellect
should be guided by (i.e., Lambert’s version of formal logic); second, the
Alethiology, literally the doctrine of truth, dealing with basic ontological
concepts necessary for making truth-claims and with the difference between
truth and error; third, Semiotics as a doctrine concerning the relation
between (linguistic) signs and truth; and finally, the Phenomenology,
which deals with the difference between truth and ‘semblance’. The
Architectonic, again, develops a more detailed analysis of simple ontological
concepts, but also contains considerations of truth and science.

Clark, ‘Why Kant Couldn’t Be an Anti-Realist’; Allais, ‘Kant’s Transcendental Idealism and
Contemporary Anti-Realism’. But on the last point, see also the more careful statement in
Putnam, Reason, Truth, and History, pp. f.

Lambert, Architectonic, §§–. All translations from Lambert’s works are my own.
 Lambert and Kant on Truth
We should remind ourselves that early modern philosophers often did
not present us with a focused debate over the very concept of truth as we
know it today between realistic and anti-realistic, deflationary versus sub-
stantive, monistic versus pluralistic theories of truth, and so on. For
instance, Descartes’s Fourth Meditation, which bears the title ‘De vero et
falso’, makes the reader expect a definition of truth and its evil twin, falsity.
But what we get instead is a discussion of criteria for recognizing some truth
or another – an epistemological account. Lambert’s Abhandlung vom
Criterium veritatis similarly discusses (and dismisses) Descartes’s and
Christian Wolff’s criteria, implying that the search for such criteria must
be continued. As the Neues Organon shows, Lambert also aims at providing
tools for recognizing or discovering truths. But none of this means that he
does not also have an explicit understanding of the concept of truth as such.
So, how does he understand it? Most important is a distinction between
so-called logical truth and metaphysical truth. The former is a property of
sentences (Sätze) or judgements (Urtheile), and it is this aspect that is
primarily intended by talk of ‘logical’ here, rather than ideas of formal
consistency and consequence, though these are of interest to Lambert too.
He explains that the expressions ‘true’ and ‘not true’, just like ‘necessary’
and ‘possible’, are used as predicates by way of (i) determining the copula
(das Bindewörtchen seyn) in certain ways and (ii) being applied to a whole
sentence or judgement, as in ‘It is true that a is an F ’. He generally
introduces how sentences of judgements can be true or false as follows:
If a sentence is to be true, then it must not only possess an in itself thinkable
subject and predicate, but it also has to be thinkable that the latter applies to
the former in just the way that the sentence indicates it.
The logically True is opposed to the False, whereby we mean the Non-true, and
both refer absolutely to sentences and judgments . . . A sentence is generally
false (not-true, erroneous), if the predicate does not apply to the subject in
the way in which the sentence expresses it. And if the predicate can apply to the
subject in itself under no condition, then the assertion is plainly unthinkable.
In this case, the sentence is not only false but completely absurd.
There are three basic parts of Lambert’s doctrine of logical truth:
a sentence can be logically true if and only if the predicate term applies

Johann Heinrich Lambert, Abhandlung vom Criterium Veritatis () might be considered more
closely, but the text remained unpublished, and it is not likely Kant read it. Also, the relevant points
are developed better in the Neues Organon and the Architectonic.
 
Lambert, Architectonic, §. Ibid., §. Cf. also Neues Organon, Alethiology, §

Architectonic, §.
Thomas Sturm 
to a subject term in the way (auf die Art) in which the sentence says it does;
it is false if the predicate does not apply so; and it is nonsensical or ‘absurd’
(ungereimt) if the predicate cannot be applied to the subject under any
circumstances whatsoever. You cannot explain truth independent of its
counterpart, falsehood, and neither can be explained without a contrast
with absurdity or meaninglessness.
These remarks clearly express a kind of correspondence theory, expli-
cated by means of a subject-predicate logic. By saying, ‘It is true that a is
an F ’, not only do we wish to express that a proposition represents merely
‘symbolically’ a connection between a subject and a predicate, as can
happen in fictional discourse, but we claim that the connection does
actually hold. In current terminology, ‘It is true that p’ represents an act
of assertion or of making a truth-claim.
Lambert does not reduce the truth-predicate to this assertoric function.
We use ‘is true’ typically to emphasize that the relevant statement should
not be mistaken to be an expression of a mere semblance, a mere possibil-
ity or a fiction, or when we wish to express that we have carried out a
relevant test. But he also notes, as others have done since, that ‘is true’
does not always explicitly have to accompany the expression of a sentence
for that expression to count as an assertion. Most of the time the sentence
to be asserted is enough. Nor does the assertoric function explain
the meaning of the concept sufficiently. After all, Lambert makes all these
points in the general context of explaining the idea that truth consists in
the ‘agreement between our representation and things’.
To further determine this logical notion of truth, as well as those of
falsehood and absurdity, Lambert imagines an ideal realm of all truths, so
that all truth-values are completely distributed over all possible sentences.
Using a number of proofs, he develops what may be called the ‘formally
constitutive rules’ that make up such a realm. Thus, he builds on the
principle of non-contradiction, then argues that all truths can cohere with
one another, that each falsehood contradicts a truth and that ‘every truth
has something by virtue of which it distinguishes itself from all others’.
These latter two points can be found in Kant, too, as we will see.

Wolters (‘Some Pragmatic Aspects of the Methodology of J. H. Lambert’, pp. ff) views Lambert as
espousing ‘a combination of an “intuitionistic” and a coherentist theory of truth’, meaning that only what
Lambert calls ‘simple concepts’ can be intuited directly, whereas all other claims have to be derived.
I think that’s a conflation between the meaning of the concept of truth with issues of how we justify or
establish specific truth-claims, a conflation one also sees in interpretations of Kant, as will become clear.
 
Lambert, Architectonic, §. Lambert, Neues Organon, Alethiology, §§ff

Ibid., §.
 Lambert and Kant on Truth
Now to metaphysical truth, which is introduced not as a property of
sentences or judgements, but of concepts (Begriffe) and even of things
(Dinge). Lambert notes that sometimes we speak of the content of a
representation as an impossible thing, a non-entity’ (Unding). When we
do so, our concept of such a thing is a false concept. Conversely, a ‘true
thing’ is said to correspond to a true concept: ‘An in itself false concept
thus represents a non-entity . . . In contrast, to each true thing corresponds
a true concept, and each in itself true concept in turn represents a true
thing.’ Lambert here appeals to ordinary expressions, such as that some
object is ‘true gold’ (rather than fake gold) or that someone is a ‘true
detective’ (rather than one being played by Matthew McConaughey in
the TV series of the same name). This implies the applicability of the
truth-predicate to all concepts that satisfy two conditions: (i) that they are
concepts of thinkable things and (ii) that these things actually exist.
Because of the second condition, the concept of truth is even applicable
to ‘things themselves’ (Dinge selbst):
If one therefore says in metaphysics: each thing is a true thing, Omne ens est
verum, then one opposes that thing to a non-entity, and one therefore . . .
takes the word ‘thing’ in a more restricted meaning as one takes it in
language where one calls all possible, impossible, absurd etc. things a
‘thing.’ In this way, one transfers the truth of sentences to that of concepts,
and from concepts to things themselves, and calls the truth that is in things
themselves the metaphysical truth, which therefore makes up the proper
difference between true things and things merely dreamt of. One wants to
indicate thereby that the thinkable is something real.
One might raise an objection here, if one considers Kant’s claim that
‘[t]ruth . . . is not in the object, so far as it is intuited, but in the judgment
about it, insofar as it is thought’ (A/B). We cannot say, literally,
that things as such can be true, independently from making a judgement
about them. Perhaps we should translate all talk of truth of concepts or
truth of objects into truth of judgements or sentences: What we really
mean by ‘this is true gold’ is ‘it is true that this object is gold’.
Two points might be made concerning this worry. First, Lambert’s view
need not be at odds with the Kantian claim concerning judgements being
the primary bearers of truth (and falsehood) after all. As Lambert says in
the passage just cited, ‘in this way, one transfers the truth from sentences
to concepts, and from concepts to things themselves’. Sentence-truth
 
Architectonic, §§–. Ibid., §.
Thomas Sturm 
comes first. Second, his real interest is not to prove that talk of concept-
or thing-truth, independent of or prior to sentence-truth, is legitimate.
Rather, he aims to show that there are certain ‘simple’ concepts which play
a central role in understanding what we mean by saying that a sentence
does not merely express a possibility or conceivability, but can be actually
true or false: ‘The realm of logical truth, without metaphysical truth,
which is in things themselves, would be an empty dream.’ Many of his
discussions in both the Neues Organon and the Architectonic aim to prove
this in detail by means of providing those basic simple concepts. Motion,
existence, duration, unity, magnitude, identity, consciousness and will are
such concepts. For instance, Lambert claims that all physical objects must
be ‘solid’ and possess certain ‘powers’. Without that, they could not exist,
and thus a sentence about them could not possibly be true (or false).
Solidity and forces are, quite generally, the basis of metaphysical truth.
So, this is how Lambert understands truth. All this is independent from
epistemological questions about how we can know whether a sentence is
true, false or absurd. Does that make Lambert a metaphysical realist in
Putnam’s sense? Hardly. He does not argue for an assumption of a ‘fixed
totality of mind-independent objects’ to be described by the one true
theory of science, or for a distinction between primary and secondary
qualities to be determined from an external point of view. Moreover, he
explicitly states that his considerations concerning truth should not be
understood as providing a definition. In his view, we can define concepts
only if they have several internal marks (innere Merkmale) that can be used
in the definiens. But the concepts of both logical and metaphysical truth are
‘simple concepts’, the understanding of which can be provided only by
comparison with other simple concepts:
Considered in itself, metaphysical truth, just like logical truth, is a simple
concept, which, since it does not possess several inner marks, consequently
can only be defined or made known through relations to other concepts . . .
Thus we can say for example: A true thing must be able to exist, in a true
thing there has to be order and connection, the true in things is the
objective ground of thinkability, the solid and the forces are the foundation

Similarly, while Kant sometimes speaks of a truth of concepts – see, e.g., ‘only from the fact that
these concepts express a priori the relations of the perceptions in every experience does one cognize
their objective reality, i.e., their transcendental truth’ (Af; cf. also A/B) – this has to be
viewed against the background of his basic claim that the only use of concepts is by making
judgements (A/B). One might think here of certain parallels to Frege’s famous context-
principle, but this is not the place to explore them. Many thanks to Wolfgang Carl for
discussions on this point.
 
Architectonic, §. Ibid., §.
 Lambert and Kant on Truth
to the true in things, without the true in things existence is a predicate
without subject, etc. But all these sentences are no definitions of metaphys-
ical truth but only relations without which it cannot be thought, or which
are given by themselves or can be proved easily by considering this concept
with other simple concepts.
No doubt one could point out many problems concerning Lambert’s views.
I will mention two. First, is the argument just offered a good argument
against the definability of truth? Why not say that, with his statements
expressing his version of the correspondence thesis, and with his claim
about how metaphysical truth is necessary to complement logical truth such
that we can move from the merely thinkable to the actual, Lambert delivers
a definition of truth? Second, he wavers between two senses in which
metaphysical truth is supposed to add more substance to the merely logical
notion of truth. Does he wish to claim that metaphysical truth safeguards
actual truth? If so, how could simple concepts help to achieve that? Or does
he merely mean a stronger sense of possibility, one reaching beyond the
merely formal conditions contained in logical truth? Another of Lambert’s
points speaks for this more moderate reading: what the simple concepts do
is not fix the reference of true sentences; rather, they demarcate the
boundary between sentences that can be either true or false and those that
have no aletheic meaning at all. It is important here that Lambert repeatedly
notes that even falsehoods contain a grain of truth, because when we falsely
ascribe a property to a particular object, our ascriptions could have been
true, and might be true of another particular object:
In each error there is truth, insofar as it is thinkable. Error lies in the connection
or combination of simple concepts, insofar as these do not stand together, or
cannot stand together in the alleged way of connection. However, every simple
concept is, considered in itself, a true or correct concept . . . Accordingly, there
is truth in an erroneous representation, and necessarily so. Moreover, there can
be truth in it insofar as the connection is in part legitimate.
I do not intend to answer these questions here on Lambert’s behalf.
Instead, I raise them because they foreshadow issues we will encounter
in Kant. It is now time to turn to him.
. Kant’s Impossibility Argument

As indicated earlier, interpreters usually try to understand how Kant fits
into current realism/anti-realism debates about truth by focusing, for
 
Ibid., §. Neues Organon, Alethiology, §.
Thomas Sturm 
example, on his distinction between appearances and things-in-themselves,
his doctrines of empirical realism and transcendental idealism or his idea
that certain a priori frameworks are necessary for knowledge but also, at the
same time, for the objects of such knowledge. Kant’s understanding of
truth is explained through these issues rather than viewed as being prior to
them. But, as I pointed out, he declares that the Transcendental Analytic is
a ‘logic of truth’. The chapters where the necessary connection between
conditions of knowledge and objects of knowledge or the appearance/
thing-in-itself distinction are argued for are generally framed as an inquiry
into truth. But in what sense, or in which state, does the concept of truth
frame or direct the transcendental project? And how far does Lambert help
us to understand Kant here?
To answer these questions, it is best to look at Kant’s impossibility
argument concerning the definability of truth. Here is the central passage:
The old and famous question with which the logicians were to be driven
into a corner and brought to such a pass that they must either fall into a
miserable circle or else confess their ignorance, hence the vanity of their
entire art, is this: What is truth? The nominal definition of truth, namely
that it is the agreement of cognition with its object, is here granted and
presupposed; but one demands to know what is the general and certain
criterion of the truth of any cognition . . . If truth consists in the agreement
of a cognition with its object, then this object must thereby be distin-
guished from others; for a cognition is false if it does not agree with the
object to which it is related even if it contains something that could well be
valid of other objects. Now a general criterion of truth would be that which
was valid of all cognitions without any distinction among their objects.
But it is clear that since with such a criterion one abstracts from all content
of cognition (relation to its object), but yet truth concerns precisely this
content, it would be completely impossible and absurd to ask for a mark of
the truth of this content of cognition, and thus it is clear that a sufficient
and yet at the same time general sign of truth cannot possibly be provided.
Since above we have called the content of a cognition its matter, one must
therefore say that no general sign of the truth of the matter of cognition
can be demanded, because it is self-contradictory. (A/B–A/B;
cf. JL, :–)
The argument contained here can be reconstructed as follows. We have
to begin with two implicit premises about the concept of a definition that
Kant introduces elsewhere and takes for granted in this passage:
() Nominal definitions provide the ordinary meaning of concepts; by these
definitions, one cannot yet know whether something falls under a concept
or not. (cf. A–fn.; JL, :)
 Lambert and Kant on Truth
() Real definitions provide general and sufficient criteria of concepts; by
these definitions, one can cognize whether something falls under a concept
or not. (cf. A–fn.; JL, :)
Now, if we accept that truth is a concept, that implies that we must be able
to say that something either does or does not fall under that concept.
A different way of stating this is that the concept of truth has a necessary
counterpart, namely that of falsehood. Now, for Kant (as for Lambert when
he discusses ‘logical truth’), the bearer of the predicate ‘is true’ or ‘is false’ is
always a judgement. These points – that truth is a concept, and so either
applies or does not apply to any particular judgement – can be rendered by
saying that he accepts the logical principle of bivalence:
() Judgements are either true or false.
More precisely, what is meant by “judgements” in () is theoretical judge-
ments, as opposed to practical or aesthetic ones, which in Kant’s view do
not have truth-values or do not even pretend to describe objective states of
affairs. I shall ignore this complication in the following. Next, Kant states a
nominal definition of truth:
() The nominal definition of truth is that truth consists in the agreement
(Übereinstimmung) of a judgement with its object (Gegenstand), and falsehood
in the disagreement of a judgement with its object (= Correspondence thesis).
Premise () does not follow from () and (); rather, () incorporates or
expresses what Kant takes to be the commonsensical understanding of truth.
The argument as presented so far has a point worth emphasizing. True
judgements have an object in virtue of which they are true, as () expresses.
But if that is so, then, because of (), ‘one therefore has to distinguish this
object from others [so muß dadurch dieser Gegenstand von andern unterschie-
den werden]’ (A/B; cf. R). If we do understand truth as
correspondence, then by making a specific judgement – say, claiming that
there are five blueberries on the plate – we mean that something determinate
is the case, which means excluding that other states of affairs hold, such as
that there are only four blueberries on the plate, that there is no plate on
which the blueberries are placed, that the blueberries are merely a hallucin-
ation, and so on. This is again in line with Lambert, who claims that

For Kant’s views of definition, cf. Hanna, ‘Kant, Truth, and Human Nature’, pp. –; Vanzo,
‘Kant on the Nominal Definition of Truth’.

Obviously, the correspondence notion of truth does not encompass formal or logical truths, since
these are not about specific objects or states of affairs. See Kant’s distinction between ‘formal’ and
‘material’ truths at A/Bf.
Thomas Sturm 
‘every truth has something by virtue of which it distinguishes itself from all
others’ and that each falsehood contradicts a truth. While () and () do
not tell us how to figure out how many blueberries there are, the premises
indicate what we mean by making a claim to objective truth. This, in turn,
implies that Kant thinks that an adequate theory of truth must also explain
falsehood and their difference from each other – and, we may add, their
difference from pseudo-judgements that are neither true nor false, because
they do not assert anything determinate about objective states of affairs.
The next step in the argument turns to a presumed link between a
judgement’s having a truth-value and our ability (and epistemic aim) to
figure out what that value is. Given Kant’s concept of a concept, the
concept of truth should have one or several marks (Merkmale), also called
‘criteria’, by virtue of which we can determine whether any particular
judgment falls under it or not (i.e., whether the judgement is true or
false). So, a real definition would come down to:
() The real definition of truth (and falsehood) would consist in providing a
both general and sufficient criterion by which one can cognize whether a
particular judgement is true (or false).
Note that such a definition would be quite remarkable. It would enable us
to determine the truth-values of all judgements, ‘without any distinction
among their objects’ (A/B). It would do this not merely in the weak
sense in which Lambert assumes, in his thought experiment of a complete
system of all truths logically considered, that each sentence has a definite
truth-value. The real definition would also say which truth-value that is for
any judgement whatsoever, simply by means of the criterion, because
according to the notion of a real definition, such a definition has to contain
both a general and a sufficient criterion. But, of course, Kant does not assert
that there is such a definition, or that there is indeed a link between a
judgement having a truth-value and our ability to know what that truth-
value is. He states what such a definition would have to be like in order to
develop a reductio ad absurdum in the remainder of his argument.
The relation between a judgement and its object cannot be understood
independent of the fact that judgements have semantic content (Inhalt;
A/B). Judgements aim to be true, but can be false (see []), but when
one makes a false judgement, that does not mean that one means nothing.

Lambert, Neues Organon, Alethiology, §§ and .

This has been pointed out already by Prauss, ‘Zum Wahrheitsproblem bei Kant’, pp. ff, albeit
without noting its roots in Lambert.
 Lambert and Kant on Truth
Quite the contrary: the judgement still means something determinate,
which is why it can be false at all (‘ob sie gleich etwas enthält, was wohl
von andern Gegenständen gelten könnte’, A/B). Once again, it is as if
Kant here paraphrases Lambert. Thus:
() Judgements have contents (Inhalte) by means of which they either refer
to an object (and then they are true) or fail to refer (and then they are false)
(from [] and []).
Once one has understood this, the rest of the argument is easy to grasp.
Because of what was just said, and because of (), the following holds:
() A general and sufficient criterion of truth would have to abstract from all
particular contents of judgements.
Now look back at () and (): Since true judgements are true only by
virtue of their being about specific objects or states of affairs, automatically
excluding other possible ones, there can be no fully general and at the same
time sufficient criterion of truth. Purely logical criteria, which abstract
from all contents of judgements, are general but only necessary (Af).
Therefore, premise () cannot be satisfied, and we have to say instead:
() The justification for why a true judgement is true (or a false judgement
false) cannot abstract from the content of that judgement (from []
and []).
And thus follow two points, the second of which yields the desired
conclusion:
() There can be no both general and sufficient criterion by which one
can cognize whether a particular judgement is true (or false) (from []
and []).
() There can be no real definition of the concept of truth (from [] and []).
So, the important premises of this argument (premises [] and []) are
anticipated by Lambert; but Lambert did not state as clearly as Kant what a
real definition requires (premise []), and so could not derive Kant’s
impossibility conclusion.
One might question whether the argument, plausible as it is, does not
have important weaknesses. Consider premises () and (). Gila Sher has
argued that Kant’s argument does not convincingly show the impossibility
of a substantial, nontrivial theory of truth, because you can give up () and

Cf. Lambert, Neues Organon, Alethiology, § (as cited in section ).
Thomas Sturm 
argue that a truth-theory might be pluralistic: it might present different
kinds of material criteria for different kinds of truths. I cannot pursue
this here, although pluralism provides an interesting alternative beyond
Putnam’s sharp distinction between metaphysical and internal realism. It is
more important to consider what conclusions to draw from the argument
thus reconstructed.
. Ten Comments on Kant’s Account of Truth

Time to take stock. Here are ten comments, which first summarize Kant’s
concept of truth up to now as implied in the aforementioned consider-
ations (I–V), and then supplement these with considerations on typical
discussion points in current debates over his account (VI–X).
(I) Both Kant and Lambert accept that truth and falsehood are primarily
ascribed to propositional entities, and both claim that what a true (or false)
judgement is about – the ‘object’ – accordingly must reflect a propositional
structure. This restricts the proper understanding of Kant’s notion of an
‘object of knowledge’: not a particular entity, let alone our ordinary idea of
middle-sized dry goods, but what we would call ‘states of affairs’ today.
This is, of course, consistent with quite different theories of truth.
(II) Just like Lambert, Kant accepts a version of the bivalence principle
without restrictions, a principle that, according to some current anti-
realists, is an essential ingredient of realism.
(III) Both also accept the correspondence thesis. Both agree that the thesis
does not amount to a ‘real’ (Kant) or ‘complete’ (Lambert) definition, but
they provide quite different arguments against the possibility of such a
definition. Also, while Kant describes the correspondence thesis as a ‘nominal
definition’ and thus seems to downplay it as a mere linguistic or traditional
platitude, as present-day deflationists might view it, the thesis implies the idea
of a necessary determinateness of states of affairs and thereby the determinate-
ness of the relation between judgement and states of affairs. It thus opens the
door to an inquiry about how such determinateness is possible.
(IV) Both Lambert and Kant agree that for an explanation of how a
judgement can be determinately true or false, purely logical conditions are
insufficient. Rather, in Lambert’s terms, we must complement a ‘logical’

Sher, ‘On the Possibility of a Substantive Theory of Truth’, pp. –.
 
Versus, e.g., Walker, The Coherence Theory of Truth, p. . Dummett, ‘Realism’.

Contrary, e.g., to Christian Wolff’s view; see Rosenkoetter, ‘Truth Criteria and the Very Project of a
Transcendental Logic’, p. . Rosenkoetter errs, however, in ascribing Wolff’s mistake to Lambert
as well.
 Lambert and Kant on Truth
account of truth with a ‘metaphysical’ one, which determines the limits of
all the sentences that can properly be called either true or false with respect
to those that are absurd or meaningless. For Kant, again, this is the core
task of the Transcendental Analytic. While his impossibility argument puts
clear limits on what such an explanation can provide – namely, no
criterion that is both general and sufficient – it gives direction to this long
and central chapter in the Critique. The concepts and principles of the
pure understanding are general and necessary conditions for judgements
being determinately true or false of objects, or for judgements having a
determinate truth-value at all. It is in this precise sense that Kant says that
the Transcendental Analytic is a ‘logic of truth’, and that ‘no cognition can
contradict it without at the same time losing all content, i.e., all relation to
any object, hence all truth’ (Af/B).
(V) Kant claims that a real definition of truth would have to be given in
terms of a both general and sufficient ‘criterion’ for cognizing whether a
judgement is true or not. Since the impossibility argument rules out the
possibility of such a real definition, Kant would not subscribe to the
idealization theory insofar as this is understood as a definition of truth.
And while Putnam does not wish to claim that it should be so under-
stood, Kant could nonetheless turn the tables on Putnam: If the corres-
pondence definition is trivial or useless, so is the idealization theory. Saying
that truth is to be equated with what is rationally acceptable under ideal
epistemic circumstances does not tell us anything about how to actually
figure out truths. Also, assuming that one might develop a unique, suffi-
cient and general theory of justification would ignore Kant’s challenge that
the contents of our judgements are too diverse for such a theory.
(VI) Alberto Vanzo, in a discussion of Kant’s nominal definition, claims
that for Kant to be a full correspondence theorist, he would have to give
an explanation of truth-bearers, truth-makers and the correspondence
relation. With respect to truth-bearers and truth-makers, this is unfair.
Of course, the nominal definition does not provide these, as it provides no
explanation of the concept of an object (of theoretical judgements of
knowledge-claims). But that Kant has no theory of judgement and its
object is a strange claim, since providing this is one of the tasks of the
deduction of the categories and the Principles chapter. Vanzo also claims
that ‘to be a correspondence theorist, Kant should choose as correspond-
ence the same relation for every true judgement’, and assumes that Kant is

Putnam, Reason, Truth, and History, p. .

Vanzo, ‘Kant on the Nominal Definition of Truth’, p. .
Thomas Sturm 
close to pluralism about truth. Indeed, in no part of his Critical writings
does Kant aim to provide criteria of truth that would be both general and
sufficient, and that would spell out what that same relation for every true
judgement is. But does the correspondence thesis require this? Vanzo
ignores that the sameness condition is questioned by Sher: a moderate
correspondence view is compatible with pluralism. This might be Kant’s
view too.
(VII) What obviously speaks against anti-realistic interpretations is that
Kant accepts that there may be justification-transcendent truths. We are
unable to know whether God exists, whether the soul is immortal, and
so on. Kant does not exclude that these statements are either true or false;
we just cannot know whether they are. I do not think Lambert really
engages in this. His concern is more with conditions of scientific truth
rather than with any claim to truth whatsoever. And this may be one
reason why Kant wrote that while ‘Lambert analyzed reason . . . the
critique is still missing’ (R , ca. –).
(VIII) In the Doctrine of Method, Kant declares that the ‘touchstone of
holding something to be true, whether it be conviction or mere persuasion,
is therefore external, the possibility of communicating it and of finding it
to be valid for the reason of every human being’ (A/B). This has
been read as a hint towards the so-called consensus theory of truth, or
towards that aspect of the idealization theory of truth according to which
truth is what an ideal community of epistemic subjects would take to be
true. But Kant here speaks about the taking-to-be-true (Fürwahrhalten) of
judgements, not about their truth as such. He thus distinguishes between
truth and taking-to-be-true, anticipating Frege’s claim that truth never
follows merely from being taken to be true. Indeed, Kant adds that
community-wide agreement is likely to be explained in terms of corres-
pondence, not the other way around (Af/Bf).
(IX) In the Jäsche Logic, we read that the agreement between a judge-
ment and its object must be determined by means of other judgements.
This is a familiar objection against the correspondence theory of truth: we
cannot directly, independent of making a judgement, claim that a judge-
ment corresponds to a state of affairs. But, Kant says, this point also leads

Ibid., p. .

Abela and Allais argue for an independence of our knowledge not only of things in themselves, but
even of appearances; cf. Abela, Kant’s Empirical Realism, and Allais, ‘Kant’s Transcendental Idealism
and Contemporary Anti-Realism’. Discussing this would involve entering the notorious debate over
two-world versus two-aspect readings of the distinction, which I cannot do here.

Hacking, Representing and Intervening, pp. f; Putnam, Reason, Truth, and History.
 Lambert and Kant on Truth
to a ‘circle’ (JL, :; cf. A/B; A–; R) or an infinite regress:
the truth of the latter judgements would in turn have to be determined by
other judgements, and so on. Still, Kant does not conclude that truth
consists in mere coherence. We should here rather reapply his claim just
mentioned and say that coherence is to be explained in terms of corres-
pondence, not the other way around.
(X) Finally, as indicated in section , some interpreters point to Kant’s
partly coherentist criteria for empirical truth. However, these are not
meant to be constitutive of the concept of truth, but of his understanding
of empirical knowledge, or even science. Moreover, when Kant appeals to
the ‘touchstone of truth’ in the Appendix to the Dialectic as being
provided by the ‘systematic unity of the understanding’s cognitions’
(A/B), he again is clear that this is not meant to provide consti-
tutive (both sufficient and general) marks of truth but, as he says, is
intended as a ‘regulative idea’ that might never be actually attained. Just
like Putnam’s interpretation, such readings collapse the distinction
between truth and cognition (Erkenntnis) or the making of a knowledge-
claim, which in Kant is quite sharp.
. Conclusion
To sum up, we should reject interpretations of Kant as a precursor of
either internal or metaphysical realism, and also of coherentistic or defla-
tionistic theories of truth. His view is close to a soft correspondence view,
perhaps combined with a pluralism about the criteria of truth. Still,
locating his position might mislead us. Both Lambert’s and Kant’s concern
is not so much with the old question, What is truth? of which Kant
famously quips,
It is already a great and necessary proof of cleverness or insight to know
what one should reasonably ask. For if the question is absurd in itself and
demands unnecessary answers, then, . . . it has the disadvantage of mislead-
ing the incautious listener into absurd answers, and presenting the ridicu-
lous sight (as the Ancients said) of one person milking a billy-goat while the
other holds a sieve underneath. (A)
Reading a full-fledged, substantive definition or ‘theory’ of truth, especially
one that provides a both general and sufficient criterion of truth, into Kant
or Lambert might be answering an ill-posed question. Instead, their

E.g., Walker, The Coherence Theory of Truth, pp. ff.
Thomas Sturm 
primary concern is with explaining the possibility of the difference between
truth, falsehood and meaninglessness or absurdity. Just like Lambert’s
simple concepts, Kant’s categories and principles of the understanding
are supposed to provide necessary conditions that make it possible for a
judgement to have a determinate truth-value. All this is asserted before
Kant moves on to considerations about the concept-ladenness of experi-
ence, to his account of the unity of judgment, to his arguments for the
necessary relation between conditions of knowledge and conditions of
objects of knowledge, or the doctrines of transcendental idealism and
empirical realism. Thus, Kant’s understanding of truth informs us about
the aim and the limits of the Transcendental Analytic. Any discussion of
related issues should start from here.

I am grateful to Tobias Rosefeldt, Sven Rosenkranz and Eric Watkins, who provided instructive
criticisms on various versions of this paper or sections thereof.
 
Mendelssohn, Kant and the Refutation of Idealism

Paul Guyer
. Introduction
Moses Mendelssohn’s Morgenstunden, oder Vorlesungen über das Daseyn
Gottes (Morning Hours, or Lectures on the Existence of God), published in
, has a complex program. Its arguments for the existence of God
include versions of the cosmological and ontological arguments that
are clearly aimed against Kant’s critiques thereof in the first edition of
the Critique of Pure Reason, although Mendelssohn does not defend the
straightforward argument from design that Kant had called the physico-
theological argument, but instead offers a Leibnizian argument that the
existence of the world must be a product of the choice of the best possible
world by God. This argument is based on the introduction of a
divine Billigungsvermögen, or faculty of approbation, which is understood
in analogy with the human faculty of approbation that shows itself in
various contexts, including that of disinterested aesthetic satisfaction.
Mendelssohn’s introduction of the human version of this faculty has been
held to be a stimulus for Kant’s addition of a faculty of judgment that is a
source of disinterested aesthetic pleasure midway to the faculties of cogni-
tion and desire, although in Mendelssohn’s argument the faculty of
approbation is clearly not intended to be any sort of novelty, but rather
is intended to be something noncontroversial from which an inference to
the nature of God can be made, and in any case is not exclusive to
aesthetics, to which Mendelssohn had made his chief contributions three
decades earlier. At the same time, Mendelssohn’s work also contains a

In Schulte, Kennecke, and Jurewicz (ed.), Ausgewählte Werke,  vols., pp. –. There are now
two English translations: Mendelssohn, Morning Hours: Lectures on God’s Existence, translated by
Dahlstrom and Dyck, and Mendelssohn, Last Works, translated by Rosenstock. I generally follow the
latter, which provides the pagination of the first edition; I cite it as Mendelssohn, Last Works, with
the original pagination followed by the pagination of the translation.
 
Last Works, Lecture XII, pp. –/–. Ibid., Lecture XVII, pp. –/–.

Ibid., Lecture XII, pp. –/–.

Paul Guyer 
critique of Spinozism and a defense of his late friend Gotthold Ephraim
Lessing from Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi’s claim that Lessing had confessed
to him but not to Mendelssohn that he was himself a Spinozist. Mendels-
sohn objects to Spinoza that it is only common sense that God has created
a world external to rather than identical to himself, but also argues that
even if Lessing had been attracted to the metaphysics of Spinoza, his
morals would have remained unshaken by any such metaphysical jeux
des esprits.
But all of this is preceded, in Part One of the work, with an “Epistemic
Groundwork, Concerning Truth, Appearance, and Error,” which lays
down various premises for the arguments for the existence of God,
including the introduction of the divine Billigungsvermögen in analogy to
the human, in the course of which Mendelssohn offers a general theory of
knowledge and a response to idealism as he defines it, following Christian
Wolff and Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, in contrast to materialism,
namely as the view that there exist only minds or spirits and their ideas or
representations. Mendelssohn operates from within a Cartesian conception
of the primacy of self-acquaintance, but defends the adequacy of our
grounds for belief that there is something other than minds and their
ideas, or dualism, along the same lines Baumgarten had. Yet he subjects his
defense of our belief in external objects to the proviso that although we have
adequate grounds to be confident of the existence of non-mental external
objects, we can know them only as we represent them, or only as having the
“powers” to cause us to represent them in our typical ways. In his words,
“When I tell you what effect a thing has or how it can be affected by
something else, do not ask what it is. When I tell you what concept to use
in order to categorize a thing, then the further question, What is this thing
in and of itself? has no good reason to be asked.”
This statement could easily have come from Kant’s exposition of his
own transcendental idealism. In what follows, I will make two points
about the relations between Mendelssohn’s and Kant’s refutations of
idealism. First, although Kant’s addition of an explicitly labeled Refutation
of Idealism to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason has usually
been thought of as a continuation of his objection in the Prolegomena
to Any Future Metaphysics () to the charge that his position was no
different from Berkeley’s, which had been made in the infamous Garve-
Feder review of earlier that year, in fact Kant’s target in the Refutation is

Ibid., Lecture XIII, pp. –/–.
 
See especially ibid., Lecture XV, pp. –/–. Ibid., Lecture VII, p. /.
 Mendelssohn, Kant and the Refutation of Idealism
Cartesianism, not Berkeleyanism, and I would suggest that Kant may have
been prompted to take on this new target by the prominence of Cartesian-
ism in Mendelssohn’s Morgenstunden, the publication of which intervened
between the Prolegomena and Kant’s work on the new edition of the
Critique. Specifically, Kant’s list of the empirical criteria for knowledge
of the existence of external objects in the notes to the Refutation, which
comes, after all, in the exposition of the “postulate for [empirically]
cognizing the actuality of things” (A/B), is so similar to Mendels-
sohn’s that it might plausibly be regarded as a reference to it. But this
brings me to my second, philosophical point, which is that in spite of the
similarity between Mendelssohn’s and Kant’s general epistemological pos-
itions consisting in the fact that both insist that we have knowledge of the
existence of external objects while denying that we know anything of their
nature beyond how we represent them, Kant calls his position itself a form
of idealism (which Mendelssohn does not), namely “transcendental ideal-
ism,” which signals two fundamental points of difference. On the one
hand, while Mendelssohn is content with the truism that of course we can
only represent things as we represent them and cannot know of them
anything other than that in conjunction with our own cognitive consti-
tution they cause us to represent them in this way, Kant goes further and
actually asserts that things as they are in themselves are not spatial and
temporal – that is Kant’s own idealism; but, on the other hand, Kant
also precedes his Mendelssohnian exposition of the empirical criteria for
actuality with an a priori and anti-Cartesian proof that the possibility of
self-knowledge is dependent upon belief in the independent existence
of enduring objects, and such an argument, which does not occur to
Mendelssohn, is what makes Kant’s idealism a transcendental idealism.

This suggestion was previously made by Corey W. Dyck in “Turning the Game against the
Idealist” and by Reinier Munk in “‘What Is the Bond?’” As Munk notes (“‘What Is the Bond?,’”
p. n), that Kant’s Refutation was aimed at Mendelssohn was previously observed by
Erdmann; Kant’s Kriticismus, p. , and Heidemann, Kant und das Problem des metaphysischen
Idealismus, p. n. In spite of their agreement that Kant’s Refutation of Idealism takes up
Mendelssohn’s approach to idealism in Morgenstunden, however, Dyck and Munk actually
disagree on Kant’s response; Dyck argues that Kant is attempting to refute Mendelssohn’s
criticism of him, while Munk argues that Kant largely accepts Mendelssohn’s approach (Munk,
“‘What Is the Bond?,’” p. ). As will become apparent, I will side with Dyck in this debate,
arguing that Kant rejects Mendelssohn’s way of defanging Kant’s transcendental idealism, although
for a reason that Dyck does not bring out.

The discussion of the postulate of actuality extends from A/B to A/B, with the
Refutation of Idealism and its accompanying three notes inserted at B–.

This is the key point on which I differ from Dyck, who does not offer such an interpretation of
Kant’s transcendental idealism.
Paul Guyer 
Reflection upon what is common to Mendelssohn’s and Kant’s positions
on knowledge of external objects thus also clarifies what divides them,
namely Kant’s transcendental arguments for the non-spatiotemporality of
things in themselves and nevertheless for the necessity of belief in external
objects. Mendelssohn’s and Kant’s positions on things in themselves may
initially seem similar, but what divides them is Mendelssohn’s epistemo-
logical modesty versus Kant’s radical insistence upon both what we cannot
know about things in themselves and what we must know about them.
. Mendelssohn’s Modest Epistemology

Mendelssohn’s epistemology is a commonsensical combination of themes
from Descartes and Locke, no doubt anticipated by Wolff’s use of both of
those sources as well, with Baumgarten’s refutation of idealism in turn
restricted by Lockean epistemological modesty. We will first consider
Mendelssohn’s general epistemology as it leads up to a justification of our
confidence in the existence of external objects, and then the Lockean
restriction he places upon the Baumgartian refutation of idealism that he
otherwise accepts.
Mendelssohn combines rationalist and empiricist themes in his general
epistemology. At the beginning of his third lecture, he summarizes this
epistemology as follows:
The sum of our knowledge can be divided into three classes: () Sensory
knowledge, or the direct awareness we have of changes that transpire within us
when we see, hear, feel, and so forth; or when we experience pleasure or pain;
or when we have a desire for or aversion to something; or when we judge,
conclude, hope, fear, and so on. All of this I place in the column of direct
knowledge stemming from the outer and inner senses, although the added
reflections, consideration, and refinements of reason are so often and so
intimately connected to the senses that the boundaries separating them cannot
anymore be recognized. () Knowledge of what is logically conceivable, or in
other words, those judgments and conclusions that can be derived from the
immediate knowledge of the senses by the proper use of our understanding;
the thoughts into which we analytically dissolve those feelings; rational
knowledge. And () knowledge of the actual world outside of us, or in other
words, the perceptions that we have because we find ourselves in a physical-
actual world in which we undergo changes and also bring them about.

For an account of Mendelssohn’s appeal to common sense, see Munk, “‘What Is the Bond?,’”
p. .

Last Works, Lecture III, pp. –/.
 Mendelssohn, Kant and the Refutation of Idealism
In the preceding two lectures, Mendelssohn had expounded on the first
two parts of this list in the opposite order. First, in a manner reminiscent
of rationalism, but also of the empiricism of Locke and Hume, which
accepts knowledge founded on “relations of ideas” even while contrasting
it to knowledge of “matters of fact,” he had argued that “thoughts as they
may be or may not be of things that are conceivable” can be divided into
those that are grounded in the analysis of concepts alone, such thoughts
being “true if their properties do not subvert one another” and false if they
do, and those that are grounded in “deductions,” which display “the
possibility or impossibility of uniting in a single thought without contra-
diction certain concepts and their properties.” Mendelssohn thus marks
the difference between analytical truths grounded on the non-
contradictoriness of single concepts and those grounded on the logical
forms of more complex arguments that would later be noted as missing
from Kant’s account of analyticity. But in either case, Mendelssohn claims,
“truths of this type possess the common characteristic of being necessary
and unchanging, and they are therefore time-independent.”
Having argued that the sphere of what is conceivable or possible is
defined by contradiction-free single concepts or conjunctions of concepts,
Mendelssohn then argues that the “more narrowly drawn” “sphere of
actuality” must be grounded on an additional principle beyond the “law
of contradiction”: “not everything that is not-self-contradictory and is
therefore conceivable has for this reason established its claim to be actual-
ized.” Here is where he introduces his version of synthetic rather than
analytic judgment, although, as Kant would say about all his predecessors,
he recognizes only synthetic a posteriori and not synthetic a priori cogni-
tion. For he now combines Cartesianism with Lockeanism. He argues,
“Each human being is himself the first source of what he knows; one must
therefore take oneself as one’s point of departure when one wants to give
an accounting of what one knows and what one does not know”; this
commonsensical point continues with the unmistakably Cartesian argu-
ment that not only are “The first things of whose actuality I am assured . . .
my thoughts and representations,” but also “I myself, therefore, who am
the subject of [these] alteration[s], possess an actuality that is not merely
ideal, but real.” That is, if I am certain of the existence of my thoughts,
which I indubitably am, then I must also be certain of the existence of the
substance in which they inhere as accidents, namely myself. As he
  
Ibid., Lecture I, pp. –/. Ibid., p. /. Ibid., p. /.
 
Ibid., Lecture I, p. /. Ibid., Lecture I, pp. –/.
Paul Guyer 
subsequently says, “Descartes correctly posits as the foundation of all
further reflection the proposition I think, therefore I am. If my inner
thoughts and feelings are actually within me, if the existence of these
alterations of my very self cannot be merely illusory, then we must
acknowledge the I to which these alterations occur. Where there are
alterations, there must be present a subject that suffers these alterations.”
This invocation of Descartes’s cogito could well have returned the French
philosopher to the forefront of Kant’s mind as he worked on the second
edition of the Critique, where Descartes suddenly returns to prominence
not only in the Refutation of Idealism, but also in the restatement of
the Paralogisms of Pure Reason. At the same time, Kant’s attack upon
Descartes could also have signaled his dispute with his own contemporary,
Mendelssohn. However, what is of immediate interest is Mendelssohn’s
analysis of the “threefold way” that we have of looking at actuality: we
consider not only () the “thought whose actuality we have called ideal and
that is merely an alteration” and () “the thing that thinks or the enduring
substance in respect of which the alteration happens,” but also () “the
thing that is the object of thought, or is the anterior cause of the thought,
to which we are in many cases inclined to ascribe a real existence.” It is at
this point that we ask, “But how are we are assured that these things
outside of us also have an actual existence and are something more than
mere thoughts within us?”
To answer this question, Mendelssohn constructs an elaborate argu-
ment that is partly Lockean and partly original. The Lockean part is that
although we are “aware that our senses occasionally deceive us,” we
nevertheless place confidence in them when we “find agreement or con-
cord among our various senses. For every additional sense that suggests the
existence of some object, we grow more confident in believing in its
actuality.” The original part – or perhaps a Humean part, if Hume is
to be taken, at face value, as explaining rather than questioning our practice
of induction – is that “the degree of our certainty” about the connection
between our concordant sensory observations and an external cause of
them “grows, and when the number of such cases is very large, . . . the
degree of our certitude is hardly distinguishable from what we feel when
something seems self-evidently obvious,” that is, obvious from the law of

Ibid., Lecture V, p. /.

Munk treats the two “addenda” on Descartes in the second edition of the Critique in precisely this
way; see Munk, “‘What Is the Bond?,’” pp. –.
 
Mendelssohn, Last Works, Lecture I, p. /. Ibid., Lecture I, p. /.
 Mendelssohn, Kant and the Refutation of Idealism
contradiction alone. Sensory concord combined with induction are thus
supposed to provide us with a degree of assurance of the existence of
external objects practically equivalent to what we have in the case
of analytic, necessary truths. To both parts of this argument Mendels-
sohn then adds a Cartesian argument that although we may be moment-
arily deluded about external existence in dreams, “The ideas of the
waking individual, however, are images of things outside of us that are
actually present, appearing according to the rules of the order in which
they are actually produced outside us; they all belong to a common world,”
and we can be confident of this because, “as more senses come to confirm
our belief that we are seeing the presentation of [the object itself], as we see
it from various distances and through manifold media, the more certain
is our conviction in the object’s actual existence.” In particular, while
I may be left entirely to my own devices when dreaming, in waking life
my own claims to knowledge of external existence can be corroborated by
others: “as more people come to agree with me in finding things to be as
I find them, the greater becomes my certainty that the cause of my belief
does not lie in my particular constitution,” although it does lie in the
human constitution in general.
Having argued in this way for knowledge of actual existence, Mendels-
sohn makes the interesting observation, which actually parallels Kant’s
conception of the metaphysics of nature in his Metaphysical Foundations of
Natural Science published in the following year, that natural science is
actually a combination of empirical and analytical, contingent and neces-
sary truths: “The researches of Newton, Galileo, and others combine . . .
laws of nature that have come to be accepted by us” on the basis of these
factors “with the whole realm of logically conceivable truths governed by
the law of contradiction – that is, they combine the physical laws concern-
ing bodies and weight with the principles of mathematics and logic.”
But the important point for us now is that he is happy to describe what

Ibid., Lecture II, p. /.

Dyck emphasizes instead an argument that we (that is, any one of us) can derive confirmation in our
beliefs about external objects from our agreement about them with other people (Dyck, “Turning
the Game,” pp. –). Of course such an argument, though Mendelssohn does make it, is
patently question-begging, at least if other people are included among the external objects the
existence of which the Cartesian self has to prove – as they famously were for the skeptical poseur of
the First Meditation, who worried that even his own body, let alone those of others, might be
nothing but images in a hallucination or dream.

That is, the argument of Descartes once he has set aside the skeptical doubts of the first Meditation.
 
Mendelssohn, Last Works, Lecture VI, pp. –/. Ibid., Lecture VI, p. /.

Ibid., Lecture II, p. /.
Paul Guyer 
takes us from our indubitable knowledge of our own mental states to our
confidence in the existence of external objects as mechanisms of human
psychology. Immediately following the passages just quoted, he says in
general terms that “it follows from the very nature of human understand-
ing that we resist ascribing an observed concord among things to mere
chance, but we always search for a cause whenever we discern harmony
and concord within diversity . . . Our belief can, as we have seen, reach
such a level of conviction as to be nearly indistinguishable from what we
take to be self-evidently obvious.” But a few pages earlier, he had
explicitly described the source of our conviction in the existence of external
objects as a matter of human psychology:
This affective aspect of our knowledge is really a matter for the science of
psychology and character. As soon as we are dealing with the knowledge
of the sort of things whose actuality is possible but not necessary, the quality
of our knowledge is mixed. In part it consists in the immediate experience of
something or a sensory perception that arises within us by itself; and in part
it consists in the comparison of these perceptions and the mental work we
do when we notice similarities among them or when we see their underlying
general principles. The principles may either be grounded in reason or in an
induction whose level of conviction depends upon how perfect or imper-
fect – that is, complete or incomplete – is the evidence that supports it.
Strikingly, Mendelssohn feels no need to follow either Descartes or Locke
in arguing that God underwrites the reliability of human psychology; his
position seems rather to be simply that there is no possibility of resisting
the human psychology of belief-formation. Under the circumstances he
has described, of sensory concordance and repeated experience, the idea of
external existence simply “forces itself upon our well-functioning sensory
apparatus and . . . will not admit of being gainsaid.”
However, Mendelssohn then insists that all we have come to have an
adequate degree of confidence in by means of the psychological mechanisms
he describes is that there are external objects that have the power to produce
in us the kinds of ideas that they do, and not anything more. His use of
the Lockean term “power” here is unmistakable. Locke had observed that we
 
Ibid., Lecture II, p. /. Ibid., Lecture II, p. /.

As Dyck points out, Mendelssohn goes further and argues that (what I am calling) the human
psychology of belief-formation is a “positive power for thinking in the soul,” which can be counted
upon to deliver truth rather than falsehood (Dyck, “Turning the Game,” pp. –). Again, there can
be no doubt that Mendelssohn does take this further step, although, again, there could also be a
question of whether in so doing he is not begging the question against skeptical idealism: how does he
decide what tendencies of the mind are “positive powers” rather than mere “incapacities” of the soul?

Last Works, Lecture V, p. /.
 Mendelssohn, Kant and the Refutation of Idealism
are not “to wonder, that Powers make a great part of our complex Ideas of
Substances,” although he had based this claim on the fact that our ideas of the
secondary qualities of objects “are those, which in most of them serve
principally to distinguish Substances one from another, and commonly make
a considerable part of the complex Idea of the several sorts of them,” while
allowing that our ideas of primary qualities do actually resemble, at least in
kind, the actual, internal properties of external objects. Mendelssohn, how-
ever, extends Locke’s point to all the qualities of objects: what we know of
objects, no matter how well we know them beyond the simple fact that they
exist, is how they present themselves to us, or what ideas in us they have the
power to evoke. He offers an example borrowed from Hume:
The color and feeling of bread has been so often observed to be connected
with a certain taste and a certain effect upon the nourishment of our body
that we are justified in believing that both sets of properties are the
consequences of the inward nature of the bread, and that with any given
piece of bread we see and feel we may expect the same taste and the same
nourishing effect. The inward nature by virtue of which bread produces the
effects we ascribe to it we call its “power.”
No matter how much we know about the bread or about anything else,
what we know is what powers it has to produce ideas in us, not what it is in
itself, independent of such powers. In more general terms, “we know
nothing more about the body itself than what it does or suffers, and . . .
apart from a thing’s doings and sufferings nothing further about it can be
conceived.” Mendelssohn presents this conclusion as trivially true, not
depending upon any special reason to deny that our ideas match up to
reality, but rather as following from the simple fact that however much
knowledge of objects we are acquiring, we are always simply acquiring new
ideas or concepts of those objects. You might ask,
“What is the original lying behind all sensible qualities after you take away
from it all the effects it may have upon sensate beings?” I answer, “That is
something that cannot be asked about, because it must lie outside any
concept, and therefore, given the terms of the question, the original cannot
be an object of knowledge. You are looking for a concept that would
actually be no concept, and therefore something contradictory. Here we
are standing at the limits of knowledge, and every step that we want to take
further is a step into the void that can lead to no goal.”

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, II.xxiii., p. .
 
Last Works, Lecture II, p. /. Ibid., Lecture VII, p. /.

Ibid., Lecture, VII, p. /.
Paul Guyer 
It is not that there is anything particular that we do not know about
objects, any particular aspect of them that is blocked from our grasp; it is
just that, truistically, whatever we know about objects is what we know
about them. The limits of our knowledge are not an impairment or defect
of any kind, but just this fact: “We only say that the representation we
have of material beings, as extended, capable of motion, and impenetrable,
is not a consequence of some weakness or impairment of ours, but rather
that this representation arises from the unimpaired power of our mind and
that it is common to all thinking beings.” It is not misleading for us to
ascribe properties as we represent them to objects and not just to ourselves,
for objects really do have the power to arouse in us the sensory ideas and
concepts they do arouse: “This material original arouses in us the idea of
extension, motion, shape, impenetrability, and so on. Therefore, this
original itself is extended, capable of motion, impenetrable and able to
assume certain figures.” But it is a mistake, one that we might even say we
are led to by the form of our language, to think that in saying the latter
we are saying anything more than the former, anything more than that the
objects do arouse these ideas in us: “One lets oneself be deceived and led
astray by empty words if one wants to understand something more than
that by the expressions ‘to be extended,’ or ‘to be capable of motion,’ or ‘to
be impenetrable.’” This, we might say, is the anodyne truth of idealism,
or an indisputable form of epistemological modesty.
To be sure, Mendelssohn actually makes this statement in a defense of
“dualism” against “idealism.” This is because he understands idealism not
as the simple doctrine that after all, no matter what we know of things,
what we know of them is what we know, but rather as the doctrine that
there exists nothing but minds, and dualism conversely as the doctrine that
there exist objects in addition to minds. He firmly accepts the latter,
but subject to the proviso that we cannot know anything of these objects
beyond how they appear to us. This is his restriction to Baumgarten’s
refutation of idealism.
Mendelssohn describes the idealist, to be distinguished from the
“absurdity of the egoist,” as one who “admits to the existence of thinking
beings besides himself and who does not arrogate to his humble self
alone the merit of being the sole substance that has a purchase on reality.”
There is room within idealism for a distinction between subjectivity
and objectivity, or illusion and empirical truth, because the idealist can
distinguish “the subjective sequence of things that is true only in him,
 
Ibid., Lecture VI, p. /. Ibid., Lecture VII, p. /.
 Mendelssohn, Kant and the Refutation of Idealism
from the objective sequence of things that is commonly shared by
all thinking beings.” Even so, idealism is to be distinguished from dualism,
the position that “there are both physical and psychical substances,” with
the proviso, however, that although the agreement among different sub-
jects in the way they represent physical objects points “to a common
source of the agreement located outside us,” nevertheless these objects
are “not entirely like what they seem to us to be, for the limitations of
our cognitive faculty alter the way they come to be represented.” This
restriction is the consequence of the trivial fact that we can only represent
things as we represent them, and is the one criticism Mendelssohn has to
make of Baumgarten’s refutation of idealism. Mendelssohn does not refer
explicitly to Baumgarten, only to “philosophers” who “have also tried to
use” the principle that, due to his faculty of approbation, God creates only
the best of all possible worlds “to demonstratively persuade the idealists of
the groundlessness of their opinion.” But the argument he then
expounds is unmistakably that which Baumgarten had directed against
the idealists in his Metaphysica.
There Baumgarten defined the idealist as “Whoever admits only spirits
in this world,” and then argued, on the basis of the previously demon-
strated premise that only the most perfect of possible worlds exists,
together with the definition that “the most perfect world embraces as many
() simultaneous, () successive, and () as great beings as are compossible
in the best world,” that “even if there is only one non-intellectual monad
possible in itself that is compossible with spirits in the world, whose
perfection either subtracts nothing from the perfection of the spirits, or
does not subtract from the perfection of the spirits so much as it adds to
the perfection of the whole, then the IDEALISTIC WORLD, such as is
posited by the idealist, is not the most perfect.” In other words, a world
that contains both psychical and physical objects, to use Mendelssohn’s
terms, has more variety and thus more perfection than a world that
contains only the former, and is therefore the kind of world God would
have created in preference to the former. Baumgarten then adds the
requirement that perfection does not consist in sheer numbers or numbers
of kinds of things, but also in the greatest possible rather than any lesser
harmony among them: “In the most perfect world there is the greatest
universal nexus, harmony, and agreement that is possible in a world.”
 
Ibid., Lecture VI, pp. –/. Ibid., Lecture XII, p. /.
 
Metaphysics, th edn., ed. and trans. Fugate and Hymers, §, p. . Ibid., §, p. .
 
Ibid., §, p. . Ibid., §, p. .
Paul Guyer 
He does not explicitly say so, but presumably this harmony includes
that between minds and nonmental objects in virtue of which the former
represent the latter – that could at least be an implication of Baumgarten’s
subsequent defense of a “UNIVERSAL PRE-ESTABLISHED HAR-
MONY” that includes the “INTERACTION OF MUNDANE
SUBSTANCES.”
Mendelssohn then combines these two steps, the lemma that the most
perfect world includes two kinds of substances rather than one and the
thought of the harmony in virtue of which one can represent the other, in
the argument that he attributes to the “philosophers opposed to idealism”:
A configuration of the interconnection among things in which matter, as
the object of representation, actually exists must necessarily be more perfect
than a configuration in which sensory qualities have no external object. In
the latter configuration there is only a harmony among the representations
within the minds of thinking beings, insofar as these representations are
images that contain truth, but in the former configuration, the representa-
tions of thinking beings not only harmonize among themselves, but they
also harmonize with the objects that are actually found outside themselves,
objects that are the originals behind the represented images . . . Greater
harmony is greater perfection . . . Since God only brings to actuality that
which is most perfect, the world that He created is not only ideational, but
it also contains matter, as is required for the greatest degree of harmony.
This assumes that both a greater number of kinds and greater harmony are
more rather than less perfect, and that among the kinds of harmony
necessary for the best of all possible worlds is that in virtue of which
“representations within the minds of thinking beings” harmonize with and
therefore represent “the objects that are actually found outside them-
selves.” The second stage of this argument might also be considered a
translation of Descartes’s argument that a benevolent God would not fail
to create external objects that correspond to our tendency to believe in
them, insofar as that is irresistible to our best efforts not to believe it, into
the Leibnizo-Baumgartian idiom of the best of all possible worlds. When
he then places his restriction on the Baumgartian refutation of idealism,
Mendelssohn is thereby also criticizing Descartes’s own form of represen-
tationalism, which held, on the basis of divine benevolence, that we can
confidently assert that our (clear and distinct) ideas are both caused by and
 
Ibid., §, p. . Last Works, Lecture XII, pp. –/.

Meditations on First Philosophy, in Oeuvres de Descartes, C. Adam and P. Tannery (eds.), vol. VII,
pp. –; in Descartes, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. II, p. .
 Mendelssohn, Kant and the Refutation of Idealism
resemble external objects, by arguing that the proof entitles us to hold
that there are physical substances in addition to our ideas of them, but not
to assert that our ways of representing them are anything more than just
that, our ways of representing them. In Mendelssohn’s words:
You see for yourselves, however, that these arguments can support only the
existence of an object corresponding to our representations of material
things, but it remains undecided how far the subjective aspect of our
sensory cognition interferes with and is transformed together with that
cognition into the presentation of material qualities as appearances [Erschei-
nungen]. In sensory cognition one can unquestionably find truth. But we
find this truth combined with semblance [Scheine], we find the original
combined with a perspective, and our senses alone cannot separate one
from the other.
Indeed, Mendelssohn uses Kant’s own terminology – the word Erscheinun-
gen is even emphasized in his original text – to make his point that
although we can appeal to God and his faculty of approbation to prove
the existence of physical objects, we ultimately cannot say more about
them than that they affect us in certain typical and, to be sure, intersub-
jectively reliable ways. The basic insight of idealism places a restriction on
the refutation of idealism.
. Kant’s Transcendental Idealism and Transcendental

Refutation of Idealism
That even such a friend of common sense as Moses Mendelssohn recog-
nized that we are entitled to assert the existence of things distinct from our
own minds and their representations, but cannot say more about them
than that we represent them in certain ways, may help explain why Kant
was basically dumbfounded by the immediate resistance to his own
distinction between things as they are in themselves and the way they
appear to us. After all, as he asserted in his Groundwork for the Metaphysics
of Morals, published the same year as Mendelssohn’s Morgenstunden, this is
a distinction that even “the commonest understanding can make”
(G, :). And, as I suggested earlier, the empirical criteria for assertions
of the actual existence of external objects that Kant provides in the notes to
his own Refutation of Idealism are basically the same as Mendelssohn’s,

See Descartes, Oeuvres, vol. VII, p. ; Descartes, Philosophical Writings, vol. II, p.  (where these
two aspects of correspondence are defined as the eventual target of proof, although not yet proven).

Last Works, p. /.
Paul Guyer 
and were perhaps even inspired by Mendelssohn’s recently published
account. Nevertheless, there are two fundamental differences between
Kant’s refutation of idealism and Mendelssohn’s, both of which may be
connoted by Kant’s designation of his own position as transcendental
idealism. On the one hand, Kant does not modestly think that we are
merely limited by our own way of representing things to ignorance about
their real nature, but brazenly denies that things as they are in themselves
are really spatiotemporal. This is one crucial difference between him and
Mendelssohn, who thinks that once we have described what effects exter-
nal objects have on us, there is no further intelligible question to be
asked about them, while Kant thinks there is, namely, “Are these things
really spatiotemporal?,” a question that can be decidedly answered in the
negative. On the other hand, he does not underwrite the empirical
criteria for external reality either with mere common sense or with a
theological argument of the Leibnizo-Baumgartian kind, but supports
them with a paradigm transcendental argument that empirical conscious-
ness of the existence of objects distinct from our representations is a
necessary condition of our empirical consciousness of our representations
themselves, even if, of course, we cannot cognize those objects as they are
in themselves. In other words, for all their affinities, the difference between
Mendelssohn’s and Kant’s responses to idealism is precisely that, for better
or worse (and I will say what I mean by that in due course), Kant’s is
transcendental and Mendelssohn’s is not.
First let us stipulate to the resemblance between the two positions on
the question of the empirical criteria for particular assertions of actual
external existence. Like Mendelssohn, Kant holds that, from the general
fact that he will allege as the basis of his own refutation of idealism, namely
“that the existence of outer objects is required for the possibility of a
determinate consciousness of our self,” “it does not follow that every
intuitive representation of outer things includes at the same time their
existence, for that may well be the mere effect of the imagination

Here is my chief difference with Dyck: he also observes that, unlike Mendelssohn, Kant takes “the
question regarding the constitution of things in themselves to be a meaningful one” (Dyck, “Turning
The Game,” p. ), but does not link this to a specific interpretation of transcendental idealism on
which it actually denies the spatiotemporality of things in themselves, and thus has to take the
question of whether or not they are actually spatiotemporal to be meaningful. On an alternative
approach to transcendental idealism, such as the “methodological” approach of Graham Bird or
Henry Allison, on which all that is contrasted to the concept of things as appearances is the concept of
things in themselves as one from which the spatiotemporal conditions of experience have been
omitted or abstracted from, the further question of whether things in themselves are actually
spatiotemporal would be meaningless, and Kant’s position would collapse into Mendelssohn’s.
 Mendelssohn, Kant and the Refutation of Idealism
(in dreams as well as delusions)”; but like Mendelssohn, Kant holds that,
once underwritten in general, particular assertions of external existence
may be based on empirical, commonsensical criteria: “Whether this or that
putative experience is not mere imagination must be ascertained according
to its particular determinations and through its coherence with the criteria
of all actual experience” (B–). The criteria of all actual existence are
spelled out in the Postulates of Empirical Thinking in General, very much
along the lines of Mendelssohn’s distinction between criteria for possibility
and for actuality. For Kant, “Whatever agrees with the formal conditions
of experience (in accordance with intuitions and concepts)” – that is, in his
terms, with the pure forms of intuition and the categories of pure concepts
of the understanding – “is possible,” while “That which is connected
with the material conditions of experience (of sensation), is actual”
(A/B–). Since his subsequent discussion makes clear that external
objects can be “connected” to sensations with particular causal laws, as the
existence of a magnetic field can be connected to our “perception of
attracted iron filings” by the laws of magnetism (A/B), Kant’s
criteria for actuality are essentially the same as Mendelssohn’s.
But then Kant’s combination of his refutation of empirical idealism
with his own transcendental idealism takes two very different turns from
Mendelssohn’s. First, instead of confining himself to the anodyne obser-
vation that we can only represent things as we represent them, or even to
the stronger claim, hinted at in Mendelssohn’s critique of Baumgarten,
that we cannot tell whether our way of representing things through our
senses may distort their real nature, Kant argues that things as they are in
themselves cannot be spatial and temporal. This is the conclusion of the
Transcendental Aesthetic, at least as I understand it. The nonspatiality and
nontemporality of things in themselves, or the transcendental ideality
rather than transcendental reality of space and time, follows from the very
fact that we have a priori knowledge of space and time. In the metaphysical
and transcendental expositions, he had in fact argued that we have two
levels of a priori knowledge about space and time: we have general a priori
knowledge that all objects must be perceived in a single, infinite space and/
or time, and we have more particular a priori knowledge of the synthetic
propositions of geometry and arithmetic, which describe space and time in
detail. The question is, why should such a priori knowledge, both general
and particular, imply that the things that appear to us in space and time are
not themselves spatial and temporal? That is, if things can only appear to us
in space and time, why shouldn’t we think that the things that do appear to
us in space and time actually are spatial and temporal?
Paul Guyer 
The answer is that Kant holds that whatever is known a priori is known
to be such as it is known to be universally and necessarily, and that the only
explanation for anything being necessarily as it is known to be is that we
make it to be such, a condition that is satisfied by our representations, or the
way things appear to us, but not by things as they are in themselves. That
this is the nervus probandi of Kant’s argument for the transcendental
ideality of space and time is signaled in two key passages, one in the
Transcendental Aesthetic and one in the Prolegomena to Any Future
Metaphysics. In the former, Kant says that if you were to assume that an
object other than your representation possesses the spatial properties you
represent – for instance, if you were to assume that the thing that you
represent as a triangle is a triangle independent of your so representing it,
thus if you were to deny that the “subjective condition regarding form
were . . . at the same time the universal a priori condition under which
alone the object of this (outer) intuition were itself possible” – then you
could not “say that what necessarily lies in your subjective conditions for
constructing [e.g.] a triangle must also necessarily pertain to the triangle in
itself” (A/B). In other words, while you could say that your repre-
sentations necessarily have the spatial (or temporal) properties you repre-
sent them as having, if objects other than your representations had these
properties, you could only say that they had them contingently, and the
universality of your claim to necessity, and therefore a priori knowledge,
would thereby be undermined. Kant says this even more clearly in the
Prolegomena, when he says that if it were attributed to things in themselves,
then “The space of the geometer would be taken for mere fabrication and
would be credited with no objective validity, because it is simply not to be
seen how things would have to agree necessarily with the image that we
form of them by ourselves and in advance” (Pro, :). In Kant’s view,
the possibility of our a priori knowledge of space and time and of the
synthetic propositions describing their structure implies the transcendental
ideality of space and time.
An obvious response to Kant’s argument is that we do not have the kind
of a priori knowledge that he supposes, that we may have a priori know-
ledge of relationships within a mathematical system, knowledge that is
analytic, or even, if you like, synthetic in the sense of needing to be proven
by construction rather than by mere deduction, but that any knowledge
we have that a mathematical system or formalism actually applies to any
existing objects is empirical, and thus its truth in regard to such objects is
contingent, not necessary at all, in which case we have no reason to deny
that it really is true of such objects. This is, of course, the position of
 Mendelssohn, Kant and the Refutation of Idealism
common sense, and it is, in fact, the position of Mendelssohn as well: it is
implicit in Morgenstunden in Mendelssohn’s characterization of the science
of Galileo and Newton as applying conceptual truths to sensory experi-
ence, and was spelled out more fully in his essay “On Evidence” twenty
years earlier, when he wrote that “the highest degree of certainty is only to
be found in pure, theoretical mathematics. As soon as we make use of a
geometrical truth in practice, that is, as soon as we wish to pass from mere
possibilities to actualities, an empirical proposition must be placed at the
foundation, a proposition which asserts that this or that figure, number,
and so forth are actually present.” To be sure, Kant was aware of this
position and rejected it in his Transcendental Aesthetic, but there is no
evidence that Mendelssohn was moved by Kant’s alternative, nor is it
obvious that we should be – it makes a strong assumption about the scope
of the necessity of the truths of mathematics that is not obviously justified.
So Kant’s reason for going beyond Mendelssohn’s modest observation,
that we can only represent things as we represent them and beyond that
cannot say more than that they exist and affect us, is not very good.
This means that Kant need never have taken on the burden of reconcil-
ing his transcendental idealism with the empirical realism that he also
wanted to defend. Nevertheless, let us see how he tried to do this. As
already mentioned, the  Garve-Feder review of the first Critique had
raised Kant’s hackles by associating his form of idealism with Berkeley’s:
“One basic pillar of the Kantian system rests on these concepts of sensa-
tions as mere modifications of ourselves (on which Berkeley, too, princi-
pally builds his idealism) and of space and time.” Kant had responded to
this charge in the Prolegomena, already under way as a popularization of the
Critique, with the explanation that what he “called idealism did not
concern the existence of things (the doubting of which, however, properly
constitutes idealism according to the received meaning), for it never came
into my mind to doubt that, but only the sensory representation of things,
to which space and time above all belong; and about these last . . . I have
only shown: that they are not things (but mere modes of representation),
nor are they determinations that belong to things in themselves”
(Pro, :, following which Kant suggests that perhaps it would be less
confusing if he called his doctrine “critical” rather than “transcendental

On Evidence in Metaphysical Sciences, in Moses Mendelssohn, Philosophical Writings (trans. and ed.
Dahlstrom), p. .

[Christian Garve, edited by Johann Feder], “Critik der reinen Vernunft. Von Immanuel
Kant. .” Zugabe zu den Göttingschen Anzeigen von gelehrten Sachen (January , ):
pp. –; translation from Sassen, Kant’s Early Critics, pp. –.
Paul Guyer 
idealism”). Kant also says that the Critique already supplies the “proper
antidote” to the “mystical and visionary idealism of Berkeley.” In fact, Kant
had not explicitly mentioned Berkeley in the first edition of the Critique,
but his comment on Berkeley in the introduction to the second-edition
Refutation of Idealism shows us that he took Berkeley to have argued that
space is “something that is impossible in itself” (B), and thus the
“antidote” to Berkeley cannot have consisted in anything other than his
own proof that space and time are actually necessary rather than impossible
or even merely contingent – from which, however, his own version of
idealism, denying not the reality of things in space and time but only the
reality of their spatiality and temporality, had followed.
Berkeley thus dispatched, what remained for Kant was the “problematic
idealism” of Descartes (B). Kant had already mentioned this in the
Prolegomena, under the name of “the empirical idealism of Descartes,”
where he rather surprisingly said that “this idealism was only a problem,
whose insolubility left everyone free, in Descartes’ opinion, to deny the
existence of the corporeal world, since the problem could never be
answered satisfactorily” (Pro, :), a remark that can only be explained
by the supposition that Kant summarily dismissed Descartes’s theological
solution (in Meditations III through VI) to the skeptical threat he had
raised (in Meditation II). Kant then returns to the debate not with
Berkeley, but with Descartes, in the second-edition Refutation of Idealism,
which I have suggested might be better explained by the renewed promin-
ence of Descartes in Mendelssohn’s Morgenstunden than by lingering
resentment over the charge of Berkeleyanism. In particular, the Refuta-
tion’s strategy of arguing that “the determination of my existence in time is
possible only by means of the existence of actual things outside me, as the
condition of time-determination” (B) can be seen as directed against
Mendelssohn’s strategy of, first, accepting the Cartesian inference that my
consciousness of my own ideas as “modifications” immediately proves the
existence of the enduring substance that has them, and then underwrit-
ing the inductive causal inference to external objects causing those modifi-
cations not by appeal to God, but simply by appeal to the inevitable
operations of the unimpaired human psyche. As he explains in his

Last Works, Lecture I, pp. –/.

Dyck also argues that Kant’s Refutation of Idealism is directed against Mendelssohn’s Cartesian
inference from changing representations to the self as the enduring subject of change (Dyck,
“Turning the Game,” pp. –). He claims, however, that it is “in light of the doctrine of
apperception presented in the Deduction” that “this persistent thing cannot be the I think, nor can
it be an enduring intuition” (ibid., p. ). I would rather say that it is the argument of the
 Mendelssohn, Kant and the Refutation of Idealism
comments on the Refutation, Kant actually accepts the Cartesian cogito
argument that “the representation I am, which expresses the consciousness
that can accompany all thinking . . . immediately includes the existence of
a subject in itself,” but he argues that this is “not yet any cognition” of this
subject, because to this “there belongs, besides the thought of something
existing, intuition, and in this case inner intuition, i.e., time, in regard to
which the subject must be determined” (B). That is, the premise of the
Refutation is that we do not know just that our subject exists (although, as
the Paralogisms of Pure Reason later explains, in knowing this we do not
know that a substance exists), but we know the determinate temporal order
of our own representations – “I am conscious of my existence as deter-
mined in time,” the Refutation begins (B). Kant’s argument against
Mendelssohn, as well as the explicitly named Descartes, is that we cannot
just take the order of our own experiences in time to be immediately given
without any sort of conditions and then infer the existence of external
objects from those experiences, but rather our consciousness of the tem-
poral order of our own experiences presupposes consciousness of the exist-
ence of enduring “objects in space outside me” (B). The argument for
this claim is then Kant’s transcendental, as opposed to Mendelssohn’s
empirical, argument for the existence of external objects, the real nature
of which, however, Kant agrees with Mendelssohn, we do not know,
although, as we saw, this is because of the transcendental argument from
the very necessity of our representing them as spatial and temporal rather
than from the mere observation that we can only represent things as we
represent them.
To be sure, both what Kant’s Refutation is supposed to prove and how
it is supposed to work have remained controversial. This is hardly the place
to defend answers to these questions in detail, so I can only touch upon
what I have previously argued. My answer to what Kant aims to prove in
the Refutation is precisely the position he defines in the Prolegomena:
namely that there really are things that exist other than our own repre-
sentations (and the minds that have them), in other words, things in
themselves, although the very property by which we represent the inde-
pendent existence of these things, namely their distance in space from our
Paralogisms that shows that the merely formal representation “I think” is not the same as an
intuition of an enduring substance, and that it is Kant’s analysis of the conditions of empirical self-
consciousness rather than transcendental apperception which shows that the enduring empirical self
must be regarded as constructed by sequencing or dating representations by reference to enduring
objects other than the empirical self, which is not yet given, or the “I think,” which is only a formal
representation and not an intuition of an enduring object.
Paul Guyer 
own bodies, is an artifact of the way we represent them, not a property of
them as they are in themselves. My favorite piece of evidence for this
interpretation remains one of Kant’s new versions of the Refutation from
, where he says that the possibility of temporal determination “lies in
the relation of representations to something outside us, and, indeed, to
something which is not in turn merely inner representation, that is, form
of appearance, thus, to something which is something in itself [Sache an
sich],” a phrase that Kant never, to my knowledge, uses to refer to mere
representation (R , :). The harder question is how Kant reaches
this conclusion. My thesis has been that he tried two different strategies,
without ever deciding between them: one on which he argued that time-
determination always needs something enduring, therefore something
other than representations, which we represent spatially because that is
our way of representing independence from our own representations, even
though it is just our way of doing that; the other is to argue directly that
time-determination requires space, e.g., the motion of objects in space, and
space itself is something that endures in a way that representations do not,
even though, again, that we represent space the way we do is an artifact of
our own way of representing. Either way, Kant wants to argue that the
representation of something as enduring in space is a necessary condition
of our assigning a determinate temporal order to our own, nonpermanent
representations, and if we turn around and conceive of the thing that
endures in space as itself nothing but a representation, then we strip it of
the very permanence that we need: “My representations cannot be outside
me, and an external object of representations cannot be in me, for that
would be a contradiction” (R , ;). Yet this result must be held
together with the recognition that although the things I use to determine
the temporal order of my own empirical consciousness must be considered
to be independent of me, their spatiality cannot be, but must instead be
considered to be an artifact of my human way of representing
independence.
Thus Kant ends up almost in the same place as Mendelssohn, although
by means of very different arguments. He does not merely modestly insist
that we can only represent things as we represent them, but insists that the

See especially R , :: “I cannot know time as antecedently determined, in order to
determine my own existence therein . . . Now in order to determine that empirically, something
which endures must be given.”

See, e.g., R , :, which is labeled “Against material idealism”: “Permanence is intrinsic to
the representation of space, as Newton said . . . [the representation of space] is the representation of
something permanent.”
 Mendelssohn, Kant and the Refutation of Idealism
nonspatiality and nontemporality of things in themselves follows from the
very necessity of our knowledge of space and time. Yet at the same time,
he argues that we must believe in the existence of things distinct from our
representations of them, not as a mere matter of reliable human psych-
ology, but as a very condition of the possibility of empirical consciousness
or the determination of the temporal order of our experience of itself. I do
not place much stock in the former argument, and would rather rest with
Mendelssohn’s epistemological modesty on this point. But I have always
found the latter argument compelling, or at least I would if only I could be
sure exactly how it goes.
 
Platner on Kant: From Scepticism to

Dogmatic Critique
Falk Wunderlich
Ernst Platner (–) is among those eighteenth-century German

contemporaries of Kant who are slightly better known today, and he was
widely read and discussed during his lifetime as well. He is primarily
known as a foremost representative of ‘physiological’ or ‘medical’ anthro-
pology, a discipline that emerged particularly in the second half of the
eighteenth century and sought physiological explanations of mental pro-
cesses while frequently retaining a dualist metaphysics. This endeavour is
thus part of a revival of the theory of physical influx that had seemed
obsolete due to Malebranche’s and Leibniz’s critique, but flourished
particularly in Germany after the s. As is well known, physiological

Platner spent his entire academic life at Leipzig, where he studied philosophy and medicine at the
university between  and . He made academic careers in both fields of study there and
obtained equivalents of doctoral degrees in both in , which enabled him to lecture at the
university level. Platner became extraordinary professor of medicine at Leipzig in , and full
professor (Ordinarius) of medicine in . During all this time, he gave lectures in philosophy on a
regular basis as well in the minor role of a ‘Magister legens’, until he was awarded an additional
extraordinary professorship in philosophy in  at his own request. He was promoted to ordinary
professor of philosophy in , but apparently never executed this office. The most detailed
biography of Platner is Hans-Peter Nowitzki’s ‘Curriculum Vitae. Fundstücke und Nachträge zur
Biographie Ernst Platners’. As to scholarship on Platner, it is notable that several university
dissertations around  were devoted to him; for our present purposes, the most relevant ones
are Paul Rohr, Platner und Kant (); Arthur Wreschner, Ernst Platners und Kants Erkenntnistheorie
mit besonderer Berücksichtigung von Tetens und Aenesidemus (); and, in particular, Benzian
Seligkowitz, ‘Ernst Platner’s wissenschaftliche Stellung zu Kant in Erkenntnistheorie und
Moralphilosophie’ (). Important recent contributions include Alexander Kosenina, Ernst
Platners Anthropologie und Philosophie () and a special issue of the yearbook Aufklärung, Ernst
Platner (–) (Naschert and Stiening, eds., ).

Platner’s main works in this field are Anthropologie für Aerzte und Weltweise (Leipzig, ) and Neue
Anthropologie für Aerzte und Weltweise. Mit besonderer Rücksicht auf Physiologie, Pathologie,
Moralphilosophie und Aesthetik (Leipzig, ). On Platner’s anthropology, see Gideon Stiening,
‘Platners Aufklärung. Das Problem der eingeborenen Ideen zwischen Anthropologie,
Erkenntnistheorie und Metaphysik’; Werner Euler, ‘Ernst Platners medizinische Anthropologie in
der Kritik von Marcus Herz und Immanuel Kant’; and Thomas Sturm, Kant und die Wissenschaften
vom Menschen, pp. –.

On this development, see Eric Watkins, ‘The Development of Physical Influx in Early Eighteenth-
Century Germany’ and ‘From Pre-established Harmony to Physical Influx’; Hans-Peter Nowitzki,

 Platner on Kant: From Scepticism to Dogmatic Critique
or medical anthropology is just the kind of enterprise Kant seeks to replace
with his ‘pragmatic’ one, in accordance with his rejection of the ‘subtle
and forever fruitless inquiry into the way in which physical organs are
connected with ideas’. I will not discuss this comparatively well-studied
aspect of Platner’s work, but rather will focus on the later development
of his thinking. Indeed, Platner’s philosophy is far from monolithic,
as witnessed also in his own later dissociation from his Anthropologie für
Aerzte und Weltweise (Anthropology for Doctors and Philosophers) (first
edition ). This gives us all the more reason to look at Platner’s
mature thinking, which is, to an increasing degree, determined by his
complex engagement with Kant’s philosophy. In what follows, I will
discuss this development in what could arguably be seen as Platner’s main
work, the Philosophische Aphorismen (Philosophical Aphorisms), particularly
between the second edition of  and the third of . As we will see,
Platner’s view of Kant changes fundamentally during this period in ways
that are also informative concerning Kant’s early reception.
Before turning to Platner’s engagement with Kant, however, it seems
worthwhile to look at what direct evidence we have for Kant’s familiarity
with Platner. In the Prolegomena, for instance, Kant approvingly cites the
first edition of the Aphorismen – he was thus familiar with not only the
Anthropologie. In a letter to Kant from  February , Christian
Gottfried Schütz, by that time a professor of poetry and rhetoric in Jena
and one of the founding editors of the Allgemeine Literaturzeitung, asks
Der wohltemperierte Mensch. Aufklärungsanthropologien im Widerstreit; Falk Wunderlich, ‘Eine

“dritte Mittelidee” von der Beschaffenheit des Seelenwesens’.

Kant to Marcus Herz, late  (Corr, :).

For instance, Platner complains that Marcus Herz takes issue with views that Platner ‘indeed
expressed in my old Anthropology (twenty years ago) but ever since revoked on every occasion)’
(see Philosophische Aphorismen, nebst einigen Anleitungen zur philosophischen Geschichte, rd edn,
pp. f.).

This book was published three times under the same title by the same publisher, the first edition in
, the second in . Subsequently, the editions are quoted with the abbreviation Aphorismen ,
 and . The Aphorismen also had a second volume that was published independently twice, in
 and , which primarily deals with moral philosophy. All translations from Platner’s writings
are my own.

‘Herr Platner in his Aphorisms therefore says with astuteness (§§–): “If reason is a criterion,
then there cannot possibly be a concept that is incomprehensible to human reason. – Only in the
actual does incomprehensibility have a place. Here the incomprehensibility arises from the
inadequacy of acquired ideas.” – It therefore only sounds paradoxical, and is otherwise not strange
to say: that in nature much is incomprehensible to us (e.g., the procreative faculty), but if we rise still
higher and even go out beyond nature, then once again all will be comprehensible to us; for then we
entirely leave behind the objects that can be given to us, and concern ourselves merely with ideas,
with respect to which we can very well comprehend the law that reason thereby prescribes to the
understanding for its use in experience, since that law is reason’s own product’. (Pro, : )
Falk Wunderlich 
Kant to write a review of the second edition of the Aphorismen, which
came out in , for the journal. He also informs Kant that Platner had
planned to include an appendix to this work criticizing a certain passage in
the Critique of Pure Reason but gave up on it. There is also an extant short
letter from Platner to Kant in which he recommends a student named
Tieffenbach. Friedrich Gottlob Born, a philosophy professor at Leipzig
and thus Platner’s colleague, reports in a letter to Kant concerning ‘Platner
who refutes the Critical philosophy daily in his lectures and maintains his
uncertainty, but is said to call its ingenious originator a dogmatizing
sceptic, or sceptizing dogmatic’. In a letter from Karl Leonhard
Reinhold to Kant from  June , Reinhold relates Platner’s com-
plaints about the scepticism that Kant and his followers are spreading in
philosophy, a letter I will discuss in more detail. Lastly, in the auction
catalogue of Kant’s books, another work by Platner is listed, namely his
annotations to a translation of Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural
Religion.
. The  Aphorismen: Kant as a Humean Sceptic

In the second edition of the Aphorismen, published in , Platner adds a
chapter entitled ‘The Humean System’ that did not appear in the 
edition. The chapter is obviously intended to deal with Hume, in particu-
lar with his theory of mind, but it turns out that the bulk of it is devoted
to Kant. This is due to the interesting fact that Platner takes Kant to hold a
view about the self that is very similar to Hume’s. Both Hume and
Kant deny, according to Platner in , that there is a self beyond the
operations of the mind. He argues that they are mistaken, because they do
not see that the ‘feeling of self’ directly reveals that we have a soul different
from both mental contents and the body it is united with.
This difference is based on the difference between the representative power

On Schütz, see Horst Schröpfer, Kants Weg in die Öffentlichkeit.

Platner to Kant,  December  (Corr, :).

Born to Kant,  October  (Corr, :).

Gespräche über natürliche Religion. Nebst einem Gespräch über den Atheismus von Ernst Platner
(Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, along with a Dialogue on Atheism by Ernst Platner).

I have looked at Platner’s understanding of Hume in these passages in two previous papers (‘Ernst
Platners Auseinandersetzung mit David Hume’ and ‘Gibt es eine “Impression des Selbst”? Humes
Theorie des Geistes in der deutschen Debatte des . Jahrhunderts’.

On this rather problematic but very familiar claim and its wider context in German enlightenment
philosophy, see Udo Thiel, ‘Das “Gefühl Ich”. Ernst Platner zwischen Empirischer Psychologie und
Transzendentalphilosophie’.
 Platner on Kant: From Scepticism to Dogmatic Critique
and the objects the representative power is acting on, according to Platner:
‘When I feel my I, or self, I clearly feel my ideas as different from the I,
or self; I feel the I, or self, as a power that represents ideas, and the ideas
as the object of this power’. Along the same lines, Platner argues in
‘The Humean System’ that my thinking consistently includes an awareness
that all my thoughts are activities, and thus I am aware of myself as an
active being in general. The feeling of self also includes, according to
Platner, ‘an intuition of power and independence’. Against Hume, he
insists that the feeling of self is not a heap of ideas, but the feeling of a
power, and also that the feeling of self remains numerically identical
across the change of mental states. This obviously contradicts Hume’s
claim that there is no impression constant and invariable that would justify
the idea of a continuous self or soul. But according to Platner, Kant
also argues that the alleged proof of the independent existence of our soul
based on the feeling of self is a mere delusion. So Platner (controversially)
takes the obvious fact that Kant denies that there is an intuition of the self
to include the stronger claim that the self is nothing but a heap of
perceptions.
Platner’s point against Hume and Kant (on this reading) is that there is
a feeling of self that includes more than both of them believe, namely
particular intuitions of power and activity on the one hand, and of the
independent existence of the soul (and of its numerical identity) on
the other. But Platner’s analysis does not conclude here. He seeks to
identify a reason why Kant and Hume did not see the apparently obvious:
‘When Hume and Kannt [sic] deny the conclusiveness of this feeling of
self and view it as no more than the changing relations between ideas,
it seems to me that they do not distinguish the consciousness of existence –
about which we are speaking here exclusively – and the consciousness of
person’. So the reason for Hume’s and Kant’s common failure to
acknowledge the conclusiveness of the feeling of self is their failure
to notice that there is a crucial difference between two basic kinds of
consciousness: that of existence and that of person. What is the difference?

Aphorismen , p. . Platner argues similarly for the difference of self and body: ‘Likewise, I feel the I,
or the self, as something distinct from all parts of the body. I feel the body as my property; myself, as
its owner’ (ibid., p. ).
   
Ibid., p. . Ibid., p. . Ibid., p. . Ibid.

David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. David Fate Norton and Mary J. Norton, p. 
(...).

Platner gives the introductory passages of the paralogism chapter (A/Bff.) and § of the
Prolegomena (he refers to pp.  ff. in the  edition, i.e., Pro, , ) as references here.

Aphorismen , p. .
Falk Wunderlich 
As Platner puts it, the consciousness of existence consists in the feeling that
we exist and includes three elements: () the ‘feeling of living and activity,
of power, action’; () the distinction of our actions or ideas from the power
of the soul and () the ‘recognition of ideas according to attributes’, which
requires that the soul oversees partial representations and recognizes them
as a whole.
Consciousness of person, according to Platner, depends on conscious-
ness of existence and requires or includes the representation ‘of those
attributes, relations and circumstances that constitute what is special and
personal about a human being’. It consists of three elements: () a
representation of the body and its parts and current states; () the ‘very
complex’ representation of all ideas, principles, opinions and affinities that
belong to the soul; and () the representation of the self’s current position
in space and time. Consciousness of person thus differs from mere
consciousness of the numerical identity of a person. It consists in the
attributes of a person that constitute its individual character and renders it
different from other persons. These aspects of a person can indeed change
over its lifespan without threatening its numerical identity, although
changes of this kind can be drastic due to formative experiences of all
kinds. So Platner’s main point against Kant and Hume seems to be that
they exclusively acknowledge the consciousness of person, roughly tanta-
mount to what we are used to calling personality, while neglecting the
more fundamental consciousness of existence that is responsible for per-
sonal identity. As a consequence, they deny the identity of persons, at
least in a deeper metaphysical sense.
In the  Aphorismen, Platner thus argues that Kant is, in important
respects, a follower of Hume and hence a sceptic. This was apparently
how he thought until at least around , as witnessed by a letter from
Karl Leonhard Reinhold to Kant from . Here we read, complete with
the non-committal twist typical for Platner: ‘Herr Platner . . . complains
that the Kantians intend to introduce too radical a scepticism that tramples
 
Ibid., p. . Ibid.

On the rather unusual point Platner makes here, cf. Thiel, ‘Das “Gefühl Ich”’.

Platner, Aphorismen , pp. f.

In Aphorismen , p. , consciousness of existence is treated as a kind of consciousness of identity.

Platner is not the only contemporary who saw Kant as a sceptic. Christoph Meiners, for instance, in
his  Grundriß der Seelenlehre, attacks Kant on the same grounds and also more broadly, i.e., not
only related to the notions of self and substance. On the reception of Hume in Germany in general
and in relation to Kant, cf. Günter Gawlick and Lothar Kreimendahl, Hume in der deutschen
Aufklärung; Manfred Kuehn, ‘The German Aufklärung and British Philosophy’ and ‘Skepticism:
Philosophical Disease or Cure?’
 Platner on Kant: From Scepticism to Dogmatic Critique
over all the good he and his equals have achieved’, but nonetheless ‘he does
not want to be counted among your opponents’. What makes Platner’s
controversial reading of Kant interesting, however, is the fact that by the
 edition of the Aphorismen, he has changed his mind drastically.
In this work, Platner himself has become a sceptic, and he now charges
Kant with, of all things, dogmatism. But before turning to that, we will
have a look at his views in .
. Platner on Kant and Materialism in the Neue Anthropologie

Further light can be shed on Platner’s thinking about the mind in the
s based on the Neue Anthropologie (New Anthropology) that came out
in , three years before the third edition of the Aphorismen. Basically,
Platner’s views seem closer to those expressed in the  edition and in
the  letter to Reinhold than to the sceptical positions in the 
edition. The Neue Anthropologie is relevant, because Platner there discusses
the feeling of self in connection with Kant and elaborates on some points
that he mentioned only briefly in the second edition of the Aphorismen.
Interestingly, he now puts Kant in the same boat with materialism, rather
than with Hume. He thus intends to present an argument that is directed
against Kant and materialism at the same time.
Platner takes it for granted that human beings have a soul separate from
the body that is simple and persistent, and this on two grounds: the
‘testifying intuition’ of the feeling of self, and arguments from ‘speculative
philosophy’. This is also directed against Kant, as Platner rejects the view
that the representation ‘I’ is empty and involves no intuition, and thus has
no attributes that allow us to distinguish the I from other objects of
intuition. He also rejects the view that the I is just a logical and not a
metaphysical subject. Instead, Platner insists that the feeling of self includes
a clear intuition of a constantly active and unchanging power that is
different from the active and passive states of the I, that is, a ‘feeling of
power and persistence’.
However, he restricts the scope of the feeling of self to the claim that the
thinking being is different from the body; apparently, that is all a feeling
can establish. If one wanted to establish that the thinking being is incor-
poreal in the full metaphysical sense, one would have to show that there is

Reinhold to Kant,  June  (Corr, :). On Platner and Reinhold, cf. Nowitzki,
‘Curriculum Vitae’, p. .
  
Aphorismen , pp. f. Neue Anthropologie, p. . Ibid., p. .
Falk Wunderlich 
a contradiction in ‘the hypothesis: one representation can be distributed
over several thinking subjects’ and thereby also show that Kant’s criticism
of the so-called Achilles argument is unfounded. The contradiction
Platner refers to here is laid out in the  edition of the Aphorismen;
according to Platner, every thought is in itself a comparison of at least two
objects. This means that the representation of all of these objects has to
reside in one and the same subject, and thus that the thinking subject
must be ‘a true metaphysical unity’. It is important to note that Platner
does not mention this ‘metaphysical’ proof of more specific aspects of the
self in the third edition of the Aphorismen, while he retains the claim about
what the feeling of self reveals there (see section .).
. The  Aphorismen: Kant as a Dogmatic, and Platner as

a Pyrrhonian Sceptic
In the preface to the  edition of the Aphorismen, Platner emphasizes
how important an engagement with Kant’s philosophy has become for him
now, even as he maintains an independent stance as he describes himself as
a follower of Kant’s philosophy in general rather than his doctrine. Although
this distinction may be largely rhetorical, it is true that Kantian or Kantian-
sounding ideas can be found on almost every page of the  edition.
I will thus focus here only on the core of his discussion of Kant, which is
found in the chapter ‘Of the critique of the higher cognitive faculty’.
Platner here states that the critique of the cognitive faculty is among
the primary philosophical tasks in general. Kant is thus neither the only
one nor the first to offer a critique of the cognitive faculty, but rather he
belongs to a more long-standing trend that includes not only Locke,
Hume, Tetens and Reid, but also (somewhat surprisingly) Leibniz
and Wolff. According to Platner, such a critique of the higher cognitive
faculty can have two forms: a dogmatic one and a sceptical one. In brief,
dogmatic critique is what Kant does, whereas Platner is in the business
of sceptical critique. What is the difference between these two forms?
Dogmatic critique, according to Platner, ‘seeks to measure the bounds of
the entire cognitive faculty, and, based on that, to determine the bounds
of metaphysics with demonstrative exactness’. He notes that, for this
  
Ibid. Aphorismen , pp. –. Neue Anthropologie, p. .

Aphorismen , pp. –. Temilo van Zantwijk, ‘Platner, Kant und der Skeptizismus’, discusses
Platner’s scepticism in the third edition.
 
Aphorismen , pp. f. Ibid., p. .
 Platner on Kant: From Scepticism to Dogmatic Critique
purpose, dogmatic critique is based on the premise that the cognitive
faculty guarantees certainty to some extent, in the sense that it can examine
itself with certainty, a premise Platner deems problematic here. Kant is the
most thoroughgoing and elaborate representative of dogmatic critique,
according to Platner. Sceptical critique, on the other hand, ‘does not have
the purpose of proving the validity of the cognitive faculty [Richtigkeit des
Erkenntnisvermögens], but only discusses why scepticism is unwilling to
acknowledge it as the criterion [Maßstaab] of truth’. In what follows,
I will examine the two forms of critique in more detail, beginning with
dogmatic critique.
.. Dogmatic Critique

Platner lists several key elements of Kant’s ‘dogmatic critique’, i.e., what he
conceives to be the key elements and problems of the latter’s philosophy.
I will present them in a different order than Platner does and divide them
into two loosely connected groups for this purpose. The first group
consists of familiar aspects of Kant’s philosophy, the second one focuses
on objectivity and the categories.
(.) As to the heterogeneity (‘wide separation’) of sensibility and
understanding, Platner questions whether Kant has offered a proof for
their strict distinction. According to Platner there may be just as well one
and the same faculty of representation that first receives impressions and
subsequently forms representations based on them.
(.) Platner questions whether the difference between analytic and
synthetic judgements has been established sufficiently. He argues that if
the forms of intuition and the forms of understanding were not strictly
separated (as in ., also required for synthetic judgements), the categories
could be originally connected to space and time. As a consequence,
synthesis and schematism would be unnecessary, because the categories
would be ‘sensualized’ originally.
(.) Platner complains that Kant applies the principle of non-
contradiction only to the logically conceivable and does not also regard it
as the source of the principles of sufficient reason and of necessity. This is
 
Ibid., p. . Ibid., p. .

For a summary account of Kant as a dogmatic in Platner’s eyes as a sceptic, see also Rohr, Platner
and Kant, pp. –.
 
Aphorismen , pp. –. Ibid., p. .

On this aspect, see also Seligkowitz, ‘Ernst Platner’s wissenschaftliche Stellung zu Kant’, pp. f.

Aphorismen , p. .
Falk Wunderlich 
an expected move from a Leibnizian perspective (a perspective that is often
intermingled with other resources in Platner’s thinking), and he seeks to
make it plausible by arguing that if it is impossible to think of an object as
unreal, this is tantamount to knowing that the object is real, which goes
beyond logical necessity. Platner also complains more generally that Kant
unfairly disparages the principle of non-contradiction.
(.) The first problem Platner raises that can be placed in the second
group is concerned with the relation of categories to objects. Platner here
primarily questions the conclusion that, because objects of experience are
only possible through sensualized categories, the empty categories enjoy
objective reality, and he doubts that this suffices for the deduction.
He maintains that all that is called ‘objective’ in this respect is in fact just
subjective: can thoughts be objective if the objects I correlate them to are at
the same time generated by my faculty of representation, which is some-
thing subjective? Dissatisfied with objectivity understood in Kantian
terms, Platner resorts to scepticism: ‘Should we not acknowledge the
general subjectivity of human cognition if no more than the title of
objectivity can be rescued?’ Platner thus argues that Kantian necessity
is nothing but a subjective necessity to conceive of objects in a certain way.
Platner also adds a realist component to his scepticism: a more moderate
version of Kant’s proposal (which Platner apparently would approve of)
would retain some analogy between the form of our faculty of representa-
tion and the form of nature. Platner acknowledges, however, that Kant’s
transcendental deduction in the first Critique could be successful were the
standards of objectivity to be lowered: it is ‘an indisputable truth . . . that
the kind of experience we have is only possible by the categories by which
we think the objects of experience’. Thus he acknowledges that Kant’s
doctrine of the categories is correct if it is restricted to mere subjective
necessity (although that would not leave much of said doctrine intact).
(.) As to the relation of objects to categories, Platner outlines his own
view. Categories, for him, are innate capabilities to represent the highest
kinds of what is conceivable. If anything occurs in intuition that is
analogous to one of the categories, the intuition is subsumed under this
concept: ‘The categories are innate abilities to represent the highest kinds

On Platner’s relation (and opposition) to Wolff, as well as his mediated adherence to Leibnizian
monadology, see Hans-Peter Nowitzki, ‘Platner und die Wolffsche Philosophietradition’.
 
Aphorismen , p. . Ibid., pp. f.

‘But if we now want to prove that our cognition has objective validity, that is indeed an act of
violence against the term objective thus far unknown in philosophical terminology, since it in fact
indicates the contrary concept: subjective’ (ibid., p. ).
 Platner on Kant: From Scepticism to Dogmatic Critique
of the conceivable, and thus concepts: if something occurs in intuition that
is analogous to the attributes of one of these concepts, intuition is sub-
sumed under this concept, i.e., intuition obtains this form of the
conceivable.’ Platner asks how we can be sure that things in themselves
have no influence on the form of our representations. Is the idea of an
analogy between things in themselves and representations tantamount to
the naive view that representations are copies or images of things
in themselves? He does not think so, but he does argue that the concept
of substance is just based on the representative faculty, and there is no
reason to assume that real substances in themselves are entirely what they
are in my representation.
(.) Platner very briefly makes two more points without much argument.
First, since the cognitive faculty, and consequently certainty, is constrained
to sensual experience in Kant’s philosophy, reason is limited to ideas without
objects. Second, he also lists the antinomy of reason as another important
aspect, but without ever explaining exactly why it is important.
.. Sceptical Critique

Platner’s characterizing his own position in the third edition of the
Aphorismen as that of ‘sceptical critique’ clearly contrasts with the second
edition, where his main criticism of Kant is based on the claim that the
latter is a sceptic. In explaining the notion of ‘sceptical critique’, Platner
begins by noting the widespread disagreement found in human beings.
This observation constitutes an obstacle to philosophers who investigate
the nature of the human cognitive faculty and those ‘relations’ responsible
for representation, judgement and belief. It engenders a kind of insecurity
that renders firm belief concerning epistemological matters impossible.
Sceptical critique thus consists in the suspension of judgement regarding
such matters (the Pyrrhonian epoché) and results in an ‘unshaken inde-
pendence’ that Platner himself associates with Pyrrhonian ataraxia. It is
important to note, however, that Platner restricts this suspension of
judgement to philosophical reasoning and does not extend it to concerns
of everyday life. Quite the contrary, basic (non-theoretical or non-
philosophical) beliefs are involuntary, according to Platner, and thus
cannot be suspended at all (see below).
Scepticism becomes sceptical critique, according to Platner, in reaction
to the demand that it provides a justification for its ‘Denkart’, i.e., for its
  
Ibid., p. . Ibid., p. . Ibid., p. .
Falk Wunderlich 
attitude of ‘unshaken independence’ from the doubts concerning the
human cognitive faculty. In doing so, he responds to Kant’s complaint
that scepticism lacks a critique and thus merely consists in ‘general dis-
trust’. According to Platner, important sceptics such as Sextus and Hume
did provide such a justification and thus offered a ‘sceptical critique’, but
in his view this was merely of the cognitive faculty and not of reason in
general: ‘Their determination to not embrace any system is plainly the
consequence of their eminently critical psychology’, and it does not consist
in denying objective truth but rather in abstaining from judgement
about it. Platner thus declares: ‘The purpose of sceptical critique . . .
is not at all to prove the invalidity of the cognitive faculty; it merely
discusses the reasons why scepticism is unwilling to acknowledge it as
the criterion of truth [Maßstaab der Wahrheit].’
Thus the sceptic acknowledges the existence of representations originat-
ing in the senses, in the imagination and also in reason. Accordingly, the
sceptic also acknowledges ‘the existence of the whole of human cogni-
tion’. The core of sceptical critique, then, according to Platner, is that
all human representations seem to be nothing but relations, and because of
that, there can be no ‘objective truth’ about them.
Platner distinguishes twelve elements sceptical critique consists in,
which are of a very different kind. Rather than following his unordered
list, it seems more useful to cluster them into three thematic groups.
The first includes those elements related to what is commonly called the
‘way of ideas’, the second contains Platner’s remarks about judgement and
the third his remarks on ‘objectivity’ and cognition more generally.
() The first group includes aspects of what is associated with the early
modern ‘way of ideas’, combined with a largely (though not exclusively)
empiricist conception of understanding and reason. According to John
Yolton’s account, the ‘way of ideas’ amounts to a ‘representative theory’ of
perception and knowledge that includes the view that (a) knowledge of the
‘real world’ requires an intermediary object between the knowing mind and
its ultimate objects and (b) this intermediate object is immediately given or

Ibid., p. .

Pyrrho was the first to employ this ‘true, accomplished scepticism’, according to Platner (Aphorismen ,
p. ). He then discusses later developments such as Aenesidemus and Sextus Empiricus and
concludes that there is one single, main idea common to all: that all our representations are merely
subjective, and from that it follows that our representative faculty cannot be the criterion of truth.
  
Aphorismen , p. . Ibid., p. . Ibid., pp. –.

John Yolton, Perceptual Acquaintance from Descartes to Reid, pp. –; I will follow Yolton’s
analysis here.
 Platner on Kant: From Scepticism to Dogmatic Critique
thought, constituting a representation of the ultimate object. Thus,
when I perceive a table, the idea of the table, rather than the table itself, is
the immediate object of my perception. Hence, ideas are a special kind of
object, and there is in cognition and perception always a kind of double
existence of both idea-objects and physical objects. One popular way of
framing this is to call it a ‘veil of perception’ that sits between the perceiver
and the physical object. Since there is only an intermediate connection
between perceiver and object, the ‘way of ideas’ is typically seen as prone
to scepticism, as, for instance, Richard Rorty puts it: ‘Any theory which views
knowledge as accuracy of representation, and which holds that certainty can
only be rationally had about representations, will make skepticism
inevitable.’
What the ‘way of ideas’ really amounted to, and whether it is a faithful
representation of the mainstream views of perception and knowledge in
early modern philosophy, is controversial, to say the least. Platner in any
case seems to understand it rather according to the received view outlined
here. Platner argues that (a) sensual representations are nothing but the
effects of unknown objects acting on inexplicable organs; as Platner
rightly notes, he is in agreement with most ‘dogmatics’ here, since the
‘way of ideas’ was widespread and not restricted to sceptics. However, he
conceives ideas in a sceptical vein as mere semblances. Platner then holds
that (b) all basic concepts and principles of the understanding and reason
are abstractions, that is, they are abstracted from sensual representations
and thus take on their status as semblances. Platner argues that (c) it is only
the reality of our representations as such (both sensual and reason-based)
that is ‘true and certain’. It is obvious that if reason-based ideas are
abstracted from sensation-based ones, and sensations are indirect represen-
tations of inaccessible physical objects, then the epistemic status of reason-
based ideas cannot be superior to that of sensations – where would that
additional justificatory power come from? While empiricists could easily
agree that ideas of reason are abstractions, Platner later makes a surprising
exception: the ideas of possibility and necessity are not based on impres-
sions and not even on representations, but are just ways of connecting
representations. Thus these two ideas do enjoy the status of objectivity,
and all human beings agree with regard to them, according to Platner.

Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, p. .

Seligkowitz, ‘Ernst Platner’s wissenschaftliche Stellung zu Kant’, p. , dubs this view slightly
misleadingly as ‘natural realism’.

Aphorismen , p. .

Unfortunately, Platner neither explains this exception in more detail nor discusses its consequences.
Falk Wunderlich 
Taking the ‘way of ideas’ into account may also explain why Platner
claims that human representations cannot be ‘objectively true’ because of
their relational nature. As Yolton argues, the ‘way of ideas’ emphasizes the
indirectness of our knowledge of physical objects and explains it through
resemblance as the primary relation between ideas and objects, and thus
characterizes knowledge itself as the perception of that relation of ideas.
() Platner emphasizes that we cannot change any of our representations
(both sensual and reason-based), and we cannot opt not to be affected by
the semblances they create. He thus clearly opposes doxastic voluntarism
when it comes to ordinary perception and cognition, and in contrast to his
treatment of philosophical or theoretical knowledge, where he recom-
mends the suspension of judgement, which is obviously a voluntary act.
Ordinary representations are not objective in the sense of having a direct
link to physical objects, but at the same time they are beyond the reach of
our will and, in just that sense, are a necessary semblance. This semblance
causes a ‘perfect, subjective belief’ that we can neither destroy by reasoning
nor suppress by sceptical resistance: ‘But our representations, both
sensual and rational ones, come with the impossibility to change them
once we have them, and with the impossibility to not follow the semblance
they include . . . We thus judge and live in accordance with this semblance;
i.e. we take what it represents for true and for rule-governed.’
As mentioned, doxastic involuntarism is not unlimited for Platner. It does
not extend to philosophical theorizing, and likely neither to other forms of
more elaborate thinking that go beyond basic sensual and rational repre-
sentations. The most natural reaction to our recognition of the limitations
of the cognitive faculty is to abstain from elaborating ‘systems’ concerning
the structure of the world and human affairs, according to Platner.
Platner’s pyrrhonism is thus of a specific, limited kind: it only applies
to philosophy and similar abstract forms of reasoning. Interestingly,
belief in the existence of the external world does not primarily belong
to philosophical reasoning, but also to mundane cognition, since he deems
such belief inevitable.

Yolton, Perceptual Acquaintance from Descartes to Reid, p. .

Aphorismen , p. ; cf. p.  against more radical scepticism: perception is stable to some extent,
it has ‘unity and rule’.

Ibid., p. .

Van Zantwijk, ‘Platner, Kant und der Skeptizismus’, rightly notes that this move distinguishes
Platner from classical pyrrhonism.

Aphorismen , p. .
 Platner on Kant: From Scepticism to Dogmatic Critique
() The third group of points Platner makes concern ‘objectivity’ and
cognition more generally. As to the question whether the cognitive faculty
could serve as the criterion of objective truth mentioned earlier, Platner
states that, in case the cognitive faculty were the criterion of objective
truth, we would have to distinctly realize a true, objective ground for the
universality and necessity of our judgements of reason. He thus seems to
argue that our cognition would have to include objectivity as an obvious
and uncontroversial element, maybe in the sense of a directly conceivable
link between objects and representations similar in kind to the feeling of
self. If there were such a criterion of objective truth, all human judgements
would have to agree on those truths, which they evidently do not.
Platner claims that what Kant argues about the a priori character of the
forms of intuition and the categories is mere hypothesis. He does not
provide further argument, but his claim makes sense as a consequence of
his endorsement of the way of ideas. For Platner, even categories and forms
of intuition are nothing more than representations of objects. This obvi-
ously does not do justice to Kant’s crucial point that categories constitute
objects in the first place, but it seems to point to a common difficulty in
grasping Kant’s theory that many of his contemporaries had. In a similar
vein, Platner maintains that even if there were a priori cognition, that does
not entail the objective reality and necessity of any of the a priori concepts
or principles involved, yet he appears not to notice that in such a case,
there would be no cognition proper on Kantian terms.
.. Sceptical critique and rational psychology

An interesting application of Platner’s distinction between dogmatic and
sceptical critique is rational psychology, as it raises issues similar to his
discussion of Kant in the  Aphorismen. It should thus be relevant to
discerning how Platner later thought about these matters. In the field of
rational psychology, both forms of critique set out from shared doubts
concerning the objective reality of the concept of substance, but they
proceed in different ways. According to Platner, dogmatic critique proves
the psychological impossibility of an objectively valid concept of substance
as a thing in itself, because the category of substance does not have an
equivalent in intuition. Dogmatic critique further explains this with six
related arguments or considerations:

Ibid., pp. –.
Falk Wunderlich 
() When all attributes and appearances of a so-called subject are
removed, nothing but the grammatical subject remains.
() The feeling of self, here spelled out as the ‘intuitive feeling of the
power and independence of our own thinking being’, is nothing more
than the I that is presupposed in all representations. This self-
consciousness only includes unity of consciousness, but it does not
represent ‘ourselves’ more richly or offer an intuition of the soul as
substance.
() We do not cognize persistence, the most important predicate of the
pure concept of substance, independent of sensibility.
() If things in themselves exist, we have no cognitive access to their
nature, and in sensual intuition, they appear as a mere manifold.
We are thus unable to determine whether they are substances or
anything else.
() The category of substance can only be applied to appearances, but not
to things in themselves.
() We nevertheless can use the idea of substance in order to elaborate a
system of reason and, due to the way we think (our ‘Denkungsart’), we
necessarily do this.
Surprisingly, Platner’s sceptical critique of rational psychology conditionally
accepts the first five claims of dogmatic critique, i.e., as long as they are
treated as hypotheses and not as secure truths. However, sceptical critique
fully endorses the sixth claim, allowing Platner to conclude that we are
entitled to apply the category of substance to supernatural objects, because
it is impossible to conceive appearances without an underlying self-
subsistent ground.
It is not very clear what Platner means here, particularly what exactly his
conditional acceptance of the first five tenets amounts to. This becomes a
lot clearer in a different context in the Aphorismen, however, as earlier in
his discussion Platner argued that all representations are based on, and
united by, ‘the feeling of self, I ’. This feeling, as such, includes a feeling
of both the synchronic and diachronic unity of representations and thus
a feeling or consciousness of the identity of the self. It also includes a

Among others, Platner gives references to Kant’s Prolegomena here (p.  in the first edition; Pro, ,
) and to section .. of Hume’s Treatise.

Platner gives a reference here to the amphiboly chapter in the first Critique (A/B and
A/B).

Aphorismen , p. . On this, see also Seligkowitz, ‘Ernst Platner’s wissenschaftliche Stellung zu
Kant’, p. .
 Platner on Kant: From Scepticism to Dogmatic Critique
representation of the self as an entity that is different both from all mental
powers and from the body. According to Platner, ‘I’ and ‘soul’ are
synonyms, and thus the ‘feeling of self, I’ is a feeling of the soul and serves
as an ‘empirical ground’ for the idea that the soul is real. So far, this
sounds similar to what Platner maintained in the  edition of the
Aphorismen and in the Neue Anthropologie. But in the  edition of
the Aphorismen, he adopts more of Kant’s views, so he now states that the
very feeling of self refers to both a logical subject of thought and a
real subject, but he then acknowledges that the latter is only apparent.
Contrary to the views laid out in his earlier works, the feeling of self does
not entail the reality of the soul. Similar to Kant’s doctrine of transcen-
dental illusion, Platner now states: ‘Without the discovery of the semb-
lance included in self-consciousness, everyone will believe that a real
substance is felt in it.’ Thus, when only looking at the feeling of self, it
is natural that we believe that our soul is a substance, but reasoning reveals
that this belief is unjustified. In particular (but in this respect continuous
with the Neue Anthropologie), Platner objects to seeking more specific
attributes such as incorporeality, persistence or identity in the feeling of
self, only making an exception for the substantiality of the soul, in line
with the sixth ‘dogmatic’ claim that he endorses. It is, he argues, a
‘commonly recognized necessity of our understanding’ to think of the soul
as a substance. Thus Platner’s view of rational psychology in the 
Aphorismen is that the feeling of self as such does not reveal anything but
the bare existence of some thinking entity, while at the same time we are
saddled with the necessary illusion of the substantiality of the soul, which
is, however, not a matter of feeling but a necessary idea of the understand-
ing. The latter, in turn, is different from the specific claims about the soul,
such as incorporeality, which apparently cannot be established through
philosophical means at all at this stage of Platner’s development.
. Conclusion
It has become obvious that the development of Platner’s thinking from the
s onwards is thoroughly intertwined with his attempts to come to
grips with Kant. From a present-day perspective, it is at least debatable
how faithful he is to Kant in this endeavour. More often than not, he is
struggling with and at the same time appropriating and modifying Kantian
ideas, and it is not always clear to what extent he is aware of his frequently
 
Aphorismen , p. . Ibid., p. .
Falk Wunderlich 
dramatic changes to them. It would, of course, be easy to dismiss Platner’s
endeavour on the basis of a perspective informed by nearly  years of
Kant scholarship, but I would instead recommend that we regard Platner
as an instructive example of how influential independent thinkers sought to
deal with the impact of Kant’s philosophy. This can help to correct an
otherwise obvious (and obviously false) narrative according to which Kant
had mainly either staunch adherents who would, at best, criticize minor
details but accept ‘the system’ of Kant’s philosophy as a whole, or staunch
critics who would excoriate it altogether, with Carl Christian Erhard
Schmid, Johann Schultz or Ludwig Heinrich Jakob on the side of the
adherents, and Christoph Meiners, Johann Georg Heinrich Feder or
Johann August Eberhard (and to some extent Christian Garve) with the
opponents, where this is followed by German idealism as a natural
‘advance’ over Kant. Platner’s independent, if often inconclusive, attempt
to integrate his own philosophy with Kant’s shows, in any case, that the
philosophical scene in late Enlightenment Germany was richer and more
diverse than such a picture of monolithic blocks after  suggests.
 
Lambert and Kant on Cognition ( Erkenntnis)

and Science ( Wissenschaft)
Eric Watkins
. Introduction
At first glance, it might seem that not much is to be gained by considering
the relationship between Lambert and Kant. They never met in person,
Kant refers to Lambert explicitly only once in the Critique of Pure Reason,
and they exchanged only a handful of letters, five to be exact: three
composed between mid-November  and early February  and
then two more in the fall of , all well before Kant’s mature articula-
tion of his position in the first Critique. Lambert initiated their corres-
pondence on a somewhat unusual note, by asking Kant for help in
securing a publisher for his Anlage zur Architectonic (Appendix on Architec-
tonics), complaining that those he had contacted to this end were interested
only in the so-called schönen Wissenschaften (Corr, :). What makes the
request odd is that Lambert had been appointed to Frederick the Great’s
Academy of Sciences in Berlin and was considerably more established than
Kant, who was still nearly five years from obtaining a professorship in
Königsberg and a full fifteen years away from publishing the first Critique.
Now, it is true that Lambert’s last letter is important insofar as it raises a
probing objection to Kant’s position in the Inaugural Dissertation, but
insofar as that objection is limited to the issue of time and had also been
raised by others, Lambert is certainly not decisive to Kant’s views on that
score. It is thus not especially surprising that, a few notable articles and
discussions notwithstanding, relatively little attention has been devoted in
recent years to their relationship and its importance.
At the same time, there are indications, some in their correspondence,
others elsewhere, that suggest a rather different picture. First, Lambert’s

Kant refers to Lambert’s mathematical proof that pi is an irrational number at A/B.

For some recent discussions that concern Lambert, see Warren, “Kant’s Dynamics”; Laywine, “Kant
and Lambert on Geometrical Postulates in the Reform of Metaphysics”; and Dunlop, “Why Euclid’s
Geometry Brooked No Doubt.”

 Lambert and Kant on Cognition and Science
opening letter, dated November , , dispenses with the typical
formalities of politeness, noting that “a year ago Professor Sulzer showed
me your Only Possible Proof for the Existence of God. In it, I found
my own thoughts and even the phrases I would have chosen to express
them, and I decided at once that if you were to see my Organon you would
find yourself mirrored in most of its pages” (Corr, :). Kant’s Only
Possible Proof contains, among much else, a brief summary of the cosmol-
ogy he had worked out in detail in the Universal Natural History, which
displays fundamental similarities with Lambert’s independently composed
Cosmologische Briefe über die Einrichtung des Weltbaues (Cosmological Letters
on the Arrangement of the Universe), especially regarding the formation of
the Milky Way. Lambert then refers to a work that he believes Kant was
planning to publish at the Easter book fair of , titled “A Proper
Method of Metaphysics,” remarking: “What could be more natural than
my desire to see whether what I have done is in accord with the method
you propose? I have no doubts as to the correctness of the method”
(Corr, :). He then goes on to describe some of what he takes himself
to have established in his Neues Organon (New Organon) and Architectonic
and notes its similarities with Kant’s reflections on method. Lambert
would have been familiar with Kant’s views on this topic from the latter’s
essay on the Academy’s Prize Essay question on whether metaphysics,
theology, and morality are capable of the same certainty as mathematics,
since it won second place and was published in  along with
Mendelssohn’s winning essay. Lambert, too, had written an essay for the
competition, but, for whatever reason, decided not to submit it.
Kant’s reply to Lambert’s first letter, on New Year’s Eve , is effusive
in its praise, beginning: “in all sincerity, I hold you to be the greatest
genius in Germany, a man capable of important and enduring contribu-
tions to the investigations in which I too am working” (Corr, :).
While Kant may have indulged in some exaggerated flattery here, he went
on to remark that he too had noticed similarities in their methods, before
turning to a description of the problems that were occupying him at
the time and his own publication plans. As requested, he also promised
to help Lambert with J. J. Kanter, a prominent publisher in Königsberg,
though unsuccessfully, it seems, since Lambert published the Architectonic

See Kant’s own remarks in the Only Possible Argument, at :, about the similarities between his
views in the Universal Natural History and Lambert’s views in the Cosmological Letters. This is the
only reference to Lambert in his entire pre-Critical period.

His contribution was published later as Über die Methode, die Metaphysik, Theologie und Moral
richtiger zu beweisen. Aus dem Manuskript herausgegeben von K. Bopp ().
Eric Watkins 
five years later in Riga with J. F. Hartknoch, with whom Kant would later
publish his first Critique. Lambert replied with an even more detailed
description of his method, one that he was confident would meet with
Kant’s approval. In short, Kant and Lambert had clearly hit it off. It was
thus no surprise when Kant sent his Inaugural Dissertation to Lambert in
September  and Lambert provided comments only a few weeks later,
in mid-October. That Kant continued to hold Lambert in high regard is
evidenced by the fact that as late as , he had planned to dedicate the
first Critique to Lambert. That he ultimately bestowed that honor on
Bacon, who wrote a New Organon of his own, in no way detracts from
the esteem in which Kant held Lambert.
Even more important than the correspondence, however, is Lambert’s
general background and project in the Neues Organon. Lambert’s primary
orientation throughout his career was in mathematics and what we would
call natural science. After receiving little formal training growing up, he
worked in a variety of jobs (e.g., as a clerk in an ironwork and as a scribe
for a law professor) before being appointed to the Bavarian Academy of
Science in , which allowed him to develop his views on photometry
and contribute to various geological projects. After losing his position at
the Bavarian Academy in , he went first to Leipzig and then to Berlin,
where in  he became a member of the Physical Class of the Prussian
Academy of Science and made contributions to mathematics, reflection,
perspective, and optics. This is not so distant from the kind of interests
that Kant pursued during his pre-Critical period, when he was publishing
on topics such as the rotation and age of the earth (), the nature of
fire (), earthquakes (), and the west winds (). In short,
both figures were interested in natural science and in explaining how it
was possible.
One can form a conception of Lambert’s project by considering a
passage from the Preface to the Neues Organon, where he poses four basic
questions:
. Whether the human understanding is lacking in powers to walk
safely and with certainty on the path of truth without so much
foundering.
. Whether the truth itself is not sufficiently discernible to the
understanding in order not to confuse it so easily with error.

Kant’s decision was influenced by Lambert’s death just a few years before the publication of the first
Critique.
 Lambert and Kant on Cognition and Science
. Whether the language in which the understanding adorns the truth
makes it, through misunderstanding, indeterminacy, and ambiguity,
less discernible and more doubtful, or places other obstacles in its path.
. Whether the understanding lets itself be blinded by illusion (Schein),
without always being able to penetrate to what is true.
He then divides the Neues Organon into four parts, with each part
addressing one of these questions.
Lambert takes up the first question in the first and longest chapter of the
Neues Organon, the Dianoiology, which contains “the doctrine of the laws
according to which the understanding directs itself in thinking, and
wherein the paths that it must take are defined if it wants to proceed from
truth to truth.” Thus, after laying out his account of concepts, he
proceeds to describe the nature of judgment and the various kinds of
inferences and proofs in which concepts and judgments are used, all of
which leads up to an account of experience and scientific cognition.
In short, the Dianoiology attempts to determine what the understanding
can and must contribute to cognition by describing what kinds of repre-
sentations it can have, what their internal structure is, and how they must
be connected to each other so as to constitute science.
Lambert takes up the second question, which concerns how the under-
standing can distinguish between truth and error, in the second part, the
Alethiology. Whereas the Dianoiology focuses on how to infer from one
truth to another, the Alethiology considers “which marks and what mater-
ial it [the truth] provides us with for the evaluation [Beurtheilung] and
extension of our cognition.” In short, the Dianoiology presents the formal
rules of inference, while the Alethiology considers the marks by means of
which one can arrive at truth. To this end, he begins with an account of
simple concepts (specifically mentioning extension, solidity, motion, exist-
ence, endurance, succession, unity, consciousness, motive force, and
willing [Wollen]) before describing how they can be involved in principles
(and postulates) and give rise to complex concepts. But arguably the
most novel point in the Alethiology is taken up in its fourth chapter, which

Neues Organon, preface, vol. , p. iii. All translations from Lambert are mine. Some are published in
Watkins, Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason”: Background Source Materials. The translation in this case
is from Background Source Materials, p. .

In fact, in the preface, Lambert refers to each of these parts as a science, claiming that “these four
sciences also necessarily belong together”; Neues Organon, preface, vol. , p. v (Background Source
Materials, p. ).
 
Ibid., preface, p. iii (Background Source Materials, p. ). Ibid., Alethiology, §.

Ibid., Alethiology, §.
Eric Watkins 
articulates, on the basis of his earlier remarks, a coherentist system that
would allow him “to be able to lay the cornerstone [ersten Grund] for a
scientific cognition.” We will have reason to return to Lambert’s account
of scientific cognition shortly.
The third question is then treated in the next part, the Semiotics, which
considers the ways in which language can mislead, whether in its words or
in its symbols. Here, Lambert is emphasizing concerns that derive espe-
cially from Locke, who was quite influential in Germany at the time.
The fourth question is discussed in the final part, which has the
interesting title of Phenomenology and discusses different kinds of Schein
(which, depending on the context, can be translated as either “illusion” or
“seeming”). Lambert begins by describing Schein as intermediate between
truth and falsity, something that “makes it easy for us to take what things
seem to be, to be what they really are” and that can lead to either truth or
falsity. He then devotes separate chapters to discussing sensible Schein,
psychological Schein, and moral Schein. Given its ambiguous nature
between deceptive illusion and genuine appearance, it is appropriate for
Lambert to discuss probability here, especially since the German term
for probability, Wahrscheinlichkeit, includes “Schein” as one of its roots.
Given this brief description of Lambert’s project in the Neues Organon,
it is clear that three of its four topics correspond to interests that find
expression in central parts of Kant’s first Critique. The Dianoiology’s
account of concepts, judgments, and inferences is similar to the Transcen-
dental Analytic’s analysis of the different elements of the understanding,
and in both cases, these doctrines help to explain how our understanding
can contribute to cognition. Interestingly, the forms of judgment that
Lambert describes are treated in groupings that are similar to the four
headings of Kant’s table of judgment, and he too suggests that these forms
are supposed to be exhaustive. Lambert’s interest in simple concepts in
the first chapter of the Alethiology is directly relevant to the aims of the
 
Ibid., Alethiology, §. Ibid., Phenomenology, §.

Lambert makes many interesting remarks about Schein: moral Schein is about the will, affects, and
concepts of good and evil (Neues Organon, Phenomenology, §). He also draws a distinction
between subjective and objective sources of Schein (ibid., Phenomenology, §).

Ibid., Dianoiology, §. Lambert also contrasts having a concept and grasping something with a
concept (ein Begriff vs. etwas begreifen), noting that a concept is a “representation of the thing in
thought, without being able to determine how far this representation should reach,” whereas
grasping something requires that we can “explain it and indicate what, how, and why it is” (ibid.,
Dianoiology, §). Also, though he does not offer an official definition of cognition, Lambert does
connect concepts and cognition such that if one is always able to cognize that something is the
same, then one’s concept is clear (§).
 Lambert and Kant on Cognition and Science
metaphysical deduction, even if Kant describes his categories as primitive
rather than simple. In his Phenomenology, Lambert explicitly remarks
that the understanding and reason – higher cognitive faculties that are
devoted to rendering our concepts clear and distinct – are not sources of
illusion. Instead, his focus is on how sensible conditions can easily
influence our judgments and thus be mistaken for objective features of
things, a topic that Kant treats in his own way in Section Five of the
Inaugural Dissertation and in the first Critique’s account of transcendental
illusion in the Transcendental Dialectic.
Given that much of Lambert’s project in the Neues Organon is directly
relevant to large parts of Kant’s project in the first Critique, that Lambert
and Kant (claim to) employ similar methods, and that both are engaged in
exploring the philosophical presuppositions of science, it is clear that they
do in fact share a common philosophical perspective, just as was readily
apparent in their correspondence. As a result, a thorough, systematic, and
comparative investigation of the two thinkers would clearly be valuable,
especially as an aid to understanding what Kant’s own first readers in
eighteenth-century Germany would have found distinctive about the way
in which he develops his Critical philosophy. Rather than undertaking
such an exhaustive comparison, I draw our attention to two specific issues
that are central to Lambert’s and Kant’s projects, namely what cognition
(Erkenntnis) is and how it relates to science (Wissenschaft). By focusing on
these issues, we shall find a series of similarities and differences that help to
put into a more accurate historical and philosophical perspective the
significance and distinctiveness of Kant’s project in the first Critique.
. Lambert on Experience and Historical

and Scientific Cognition
In the eighth chapter of the Dianoiology, “Of Experience,” Lambert
clarifies what he takes experience to be. Experience is “the perception of
a thing with consciousness,” such that one has “not only a representation
of the perceived thing but also the representation that it is a perception.”

For Lambert’s more detailed account, see his Abhandlung vom Criterium veritatis (Treatise on the
Criterion of Truth) (written in , in response to the Prize Essay question issued by the Prussian
Academy of Sciences, but published only posthumously), large sections of which are published in
Background Source Materials, pp. –. Lambert’s views on this point are also relevant to Kant’s
Analytic of Principles, since Lambert thinks that the simple concepts he identifies result in
principles, just as the Analytic makes essential use of the categories.
 
Neues Organon, Phenomenology, §. Ibid., Phenomenology, §.
Eric Watkins 
Experience is complex, however, not only in entailing a second-order
representation, but also by involving concepts. Thus, in a paradigmatic
case, for Lambert I have an experience when I perceive an object in front of
me, am aware that I am having a perception of it, and apply a concept to it,
such as “red” (in the case of, say, an apple). He clarifies that experience is
only one’s immediate perception of an individual thing and should not
be confused with what one infers from that experience, which could be
mistaken. For example, if I infer that the red object I am perceiving is an
apple without perceiving all the features that are necessary to identify it as
an apple, I could be mistaken.
Though experience thus involves some complexity (second-order repre-
sentations and concepts), it is unlike knowledge, at least as standardly
conceived, in that it does not explicitly involve justification. In fact, it does
not even require an explicit act of judgment in all cases, since it seems to
consist in a sensory representation coupled with a concept that somehow
represents that sensory content, whereas an act of judgment involves a
combination of concepts or propositions. Instead, the primary concern
with experience is that we have a concept that represents and immediately
refers to an object that is given in (sense) perception.
Lambert distinguishes three kinds of experience: common experience,
observation, and experiment. Common experience is what is given to
everyone “almost necessarily” through the senses without any further
assistance. An observation occurs when one must take more time and
pay closer attention to an object to notice it, as occurs in, say, astronomy.
If, in having an experience, we must order and combine things that would
not normally be ordered or combined in response to a question that we
want to pose of nature, it is called an experiment (ein Versuch). Lambert
then distinguishes the requirements of different kinds of experiments
(depending on whether we know the result of the experiment in advance)
and in that context describes analytic and synthetic methods as well as
what kinds of experiments are appropriate to each method. In this way,
Lambert explains how experience can give rise to concepts and

Lambert notes that if one has an experience oneself (as opposed to getting it via testimony), it
presents us with an individual thing, even if not everything is complete and correct, especially as
matters get more complex (§). Later, Lambert makes explicit that “immediate concepts of
experience are individual, both with respect to the thing we perceive and with respect to the
consciousness of each impression that the thing makes on the senses” (§).
 
Ibid., Phenomenology, §. Ibid., Phenomenology, §.

In the introduction to his series of Latin textbooks, Wolff distinguishes two rather than three kinds
of historical cognition.
 
Neues Organon, Dianoiology, §. Ibid., Dianoiology, §.
 Lambert and Kant on Cognition and Science
propositions through which nature speaks to us, and thus to cognition of
nature. In short, “[w]e learn thereby that something is, that it is such and
not otherwise, and sometimes also, what it is.”
In the ninth and concluding chapter of the Dianoiology, Lambert
relates his account of experience to historical and scientific cognition.
If we stick simply with what experience teaches, “all cognition that we
obtain in this way is completely historical.” Though he does not provide
a definition of historical cognition, he seems to be relying on Wolff’s use of
the term, according to which historical cognition is cognition whose
ground is not known. Further, he does clearly assert that historical cogni-
tion “views every proposition [Satz], every concept as subsisting alone on
its own and without any connection,” or in isolation from other cogni-
tion as an “individual fragment.” Like Wolff, he also refers to cognition
that is exclusively historical as “common cognition.”
Scientific cognition, by contrast, is cognition that can be seen to depend
on other cognition in such a way that one has “a whole” rather than a
“patchwork [Stückwerk].” Lambert notes further that in mathematics,
one can have cognition that extends beyond experience. For example, with
respect to magnitude, one is not limited to what one can measure oneself.
For even if one can measure the earth by circumnavigating it, no one
“is brazen enough [dreiste genug] to ask whether anyone has gone to the
moon” so as to determine its distance from the earth. It is science that
allows us to extend our cognition beyond what we can immediately
perceive. Specifically, science can extend beyond experience precisely
because it shows that the dependence relations that obtain between con-
cepts and propositions can support cognition even in the absence of
immediate experience. In this way, scientific cognition “reveals the riches
of our knowledge.”
In the ensuing sections, Lambert describes the steps that are necessary to
proceed from historical to scientific cognition. First, one needs to compare
experiences with each other and clarify the concepts that are given in
perception until one is skilled enough at explaining the scope, similarities,
differences, and relations of concepts so that they are no longer confused,
obscure, or indistinct. At that point, we can then see how one concept
follows from another, which makes syllogisms possible. In this way,
  
Ibid., Dianoiology, §. Ibid., Dianoiology, §. Ibid., Dianoiology, §.
  
Ibid., Dianoiology, §. Ibid., Dianoiology, §. Ibid., Dianoiology, §.

Ibid., Dianoiology, §.

In Dianoiology §, Lambert refers back to the first chapter (§§f.) for an account of how
concepts can be clarified appropriately.
Eric Watkins 
Lambert shows how his account of cognition can conform to standard
conceptions of syllogistic reasoning.
More interestingly, Lambert then notes that we can have cognition
“without first needing to take these immediately from experience.” In such
a case, “we find such propositions, properties, etc. a priori or from the
front,” which contrasts with those that we find “a posteriori, or from
the back.” He goes on to claim that a priori cognition is a mode of
knowing in advance, which he refers to as “Vorauswissen oder Vorhersehen,”
i.e., foreknowledge or foreseeing (prediction), and that it reflects the order
of the things known. He also notes that a priori cognition admits of
different degrees, depending on whether it depends on no experience at all
or on “more or less distant experiences.” Given this distinction, he can
claim that “our common and historical cognition is a posteriori with respect
to us,” that “one can call it [i.e., scientific cognition] a priori insofar as we
derive it from the concepts of things and without enlisting several propos-
itions of experience,” and that “a priori cognition is preferable to a
posteriori cognition.”
Lambert then raises the crucial question of how it is possible for us
to have scientific cognition a priori. The concepts that constitute such
cognition cannot be concepts derived from experience. Instead, they must
be what he calls “hypothetical concepts,” which are constructed arbitrarily
on the basis of individual marks. (This is most easily illustrated by means
of mathematical examples, where one can stipulate definitions of con-
cepts.) Yet because they are arbitrary, they must be proven to have the
status of cognition. (Whether anything corresponds to the concept one
stipulates cannot be settled with the definition.) If they were proved from
experience, then they would be empirical concepts. If, however, they are
proved independent of experience, then they are what he refers to as
derivative concepts (Lehrbegriffe). As such, they depend on simple repre-
sentations that he calls basic or axiomatic concepts (Grundbegriffe).
Because such axiomatic concepts are simple, they can contain no
contradiction, and having a simple concept proves its possibility.
 
Neues Organon, Dianoiology, §. Ibid., Dianoiology, §.
  
Ibid., Dianoiology, §. Ibid., Dianoiology, §. Ibid., Dianoiology, §.

Ibid., Dianoiology, §.

For discussion of Lambert’s conception of science as an axiomatic deductive system, see Wolters,
Basis und Deduktion.

Lambert does not seem to have Kant’s distinction between logical possibility, which pertains
primarily to concepts, and real possibility, which pertains primarily to objects.
 Lambert and Kant on Cognition and Science
With this complex set of claims in hand, Lambert turns to explaining how
we can have scientific cognition a priori as follows:
§. Since in the dissection of composite concepts we approach the simple or
axiomatic concepts when we resolve them into their internal marks, it is clear
that the farther we can proceed a priori in scientific cognition, the farther we
go in this resolution and that our scientific cognition would be a priori
completely and in the strictest sense (§), if we were cognizant of the
axiomatic concepts in their entirety and could express them in words, and
knew the first foundation of the possibility of their composition. For since the
possibility of an axiomatic concept forces itself on us along with the repre-
sentation (§), it arises thereby completely independently of experience in
such a way that even if we already have to thank experience for it, experience
provides us, as it were, only the occasion for consciousness of it. However,
once we are conscious of it, we have no need to procure the ground of its
possibility from experience, because possibility is already present with the
mere representation. Accordingly, it becomes independent of experience. And
this is a requisitum of cognition [that is] a priori in the strictest sense (§).
Now if we are conscious of each simple concept on its own, the words are only
denominations thereof whereby we distinguish each one from the others, and
combine intuitive [anschauende] with figurative [figürlichen] cognition.
Finally, if we are familiar with the foundation of the possibility of their
composition, we are also in a position to form composite concepts from these
simple ones without procuring them from experience. Accordingly, here, too,
our cognition becomes a priori in the strictest sense (§).
Lambert goes on to explain that space and time are simple concepts and
that, as a result, we have three sciences that are a priori in the strictest
sense, namely geometry, chronometry, and phoronomy.
What we thus find in this part of the Neues Organon is Lambert articulating
a number of claims that are central to his overall project. First, we have his
account of simple, axiomatic concepts, which, even if they are occasioned by
experience, can nonetheless be independent of experience and must be
possible, since their simplicity precludes the possibility of contradiction.
Second, we can have a priori cognition, whether it is absolutely a priori or
only to a greater or lesser degree. Third, one way of establishing a priori
cognition involves the combination of axiomatic concepts that have been
compared (where comparison “makes a certain impression on the soul and
this impression provides a relational concept”). Fourth, to qualify as scien-
tific, cognition must both be a priori and form part of a systematic whole.
 
Neues Organon, Dianoiology, §. Ibid., Dianoiology, §.

For a summary of the order that scientific cognition should display, see Dianoiology §.
Eric Watkins 
With this sketch of Lambert’s position in hand, we can now consider
several salient points of similarity and difference between his position
and Kant’s.
. Points of Similarity and Difference between

Lambert and Kant
One can detect Lambert’s footprints all over the first Critique, sometimes
in Kant’s choice of wording, such as in the preface, where he talks about
how reason poses questions to nature, a point Lambert expresses in nearly
identical words, and other times in their main doctrines, such as in their
views of simple or primitive concepts. I focus on three specific topics: (.)
cognition in general, (.) a priori cognition, and (.) the relation
between a priori cognition and science.
. Cognition in general

The first point to note is that Lambert and Kant agree in taking cognition
(Erkenntnis) to be their basic subject matter, and they understand it in
fundamentally similar ways. For starters, both take the paradigm
example of cognition to be the perceptual case in which one is aware of
the existence of an object that displays some general features that are
captured by a concept. They also both recognize that cognition can be
extended so as to take on other forms, such as judgments that involve two
or more predicates, and universal cognition. Further, both Lambert and
Kant note that cognition can fall short of knowledge (Wissen). Lambert is
clear about this point, because he accepts the existence of historical
cognition. In Kant’s case, it is clear not only because he refers to the
possibility that cognition could be false (A/B), but also because
cognition, unlike knowledge, does not explicitly require either an act of
assent (Fürwahrhalten) or an objectively sufficient ground to support
such an act. Instead, Kant’s main claim about cognition (at least if taken
in the sense that is most important in the first Critique) is that it requires
of its object that it be both given in intuition and thought through

There are undoubtedly more. For example, Lambert seems to come close to raising the problem
that will motivate Kant’s transcendental deduction of the categories.

This account of Kant’s views on cognition is based on Watkins and Willaschek, “Kant’s Account of
Cognition” and “Kant on Cognition and Knowledge”.
 Lambert and Kant on Cognition and Science
concepts, which are specific requirements of cognition rather than gen-
eral features of knowledge.
Despite their agreement on these fundamental aspects of cognition,
Kant seems to have a clearer conception of intuition and its role in
cognition than does Lambert. For in the first Critique, Kant maintains
that intuition and concept are distinct in kind, that it is only through
intuitions that objects can be given, that it is only through concepts that
objects can be thought, and that both intuitions and concepts, whose
functions cannot be exchanged, are required for cognition. Specifically, it
is through objects being given in intuition that concepts can be applied to
and determine particular existing objects as having general features.
By contrast, Lambert’s view on several of these points is less clear. For
although he thinks that experience involves both a perception of the object
and an awareness of that perception, he does not explicitly state that
perception involves intuition as a distinct kind of representation. It is true
that he makes explicit reference to what he calls intuitive cognition in
§, quoted earlier, but it is unclear what intuitive cognition amounts to
for Lambert, since the contrast he draws between “intuitive” and “figura-
tive” cognition is simply that the latter is expressed in words, which does
not clarify what makes intuitive cognition intuitive. Thus, Lambert neither
defines intuition nor explains how it makes a distinct or indispensable
contribution to cognition, as Kant does. As a result, Kant makes a
significant advance over Lambert’s position regarding the role of intuition
in cognition, though that does not change the fact that they are attempting
to capture the same kind of phenomenon, namely cognition.
. A priori cognition

Not only do Kant and Lambert share similar conceptions of cognition, but
Lambert also introduces a notion of a priori cognition that is extremely
close to Kant’s own. Now, in line with the tradition (going back to
Aristotle), Leibniz understood the distinction between a priori and
a posteriori in such a way that to prove, or to have cognition of something
a priori, was to prove or cognize it from its causes (broadly understood),
whereas to prove or cognize it a posteriori was to prove or cognize it from
its effects or consequences. Thus to cognize that it has rained by looking at
the wet pavement would be to have a posteriori cognition, whereas to
cognize the rain as it falls from saturated clouds would be a priori cogni-
tion. Taken in this sense, the distinction is metaphysical in the sense that it
depends on a contrast between causes and effects. By contrast, as we have
Eric Watkins 
seen, Lambert’s notion of the a priori is defined in terms of independence
of experience rather than in terms of causes and effects, so that his
understanding of the distinction between the a priori and the a posteriori
is not metaphysical in the way it was for Leibniz. Though Kant is often
credited with this fundamental shift in meaning, Lambert would seem to
play a role in its establishment too.
What’s more, Lambert develops the notion of a priori cognition in ways
that seem to anticipate aspects of Kant’s views. For example, Lambert
explicitly distinguishes between cognition that is a priori in being absolutely
independent of experience and cognition that is a priori only to some
degree (e.g., insofar as it depends on experience, not immediately, but
through a chain that leads back to experience). This is somewhat different,
but still not so far removed, from Kant’s distinction (at B and B)
between pure a priori cognition, in which no empirical concepts are
involved, and impure a priori cognition, which involves empirical
concepts. Lambert also thinks of both concepts and cognitions as a
priori, though the notion of independence from experience that is involved
in each must be different, since the former concerns the conditions under
which one can acquire a concept, whereas the latter concerns the conditions
under which one can establish the truth of a judgment. Though these are
clearly different issues, both processes are independent of experience. Kant,
too, is happy to call both concepts and cognitions a priori. While it would
be difficult to show that Lambert actually influenced Kant on these points,
it is striking that they both introduced a conception of a priori cognition
that departed significantly from what was standard at the time.
. A priori cognition and science

What’s more, Lambert and Kant both incorporated a priori cognition into
their broader philosophical projects in a fundamental way by claiming that
a priori cognition is necessary for science, where science is understood as a
systematic body of cognition. In part, Lambert thinks that one of the main
virtues of science is that it can give us cognition of what lies beyond our
own immediate experiences, and a priori cognition can deliver that kind of
cognition. But in part, Lambert places special weight on the systematicity
of scientific cognition, since that is what sets it apart from mere historical
cognition. It is relevant to his concern with systematicity to note that in

For the classic treatment of impure a priori cognition in Kant, see Konrad Cramer, Nicht-reine
synthetische Urteile a priori.
 Lambert and Kant on Cognition and Science
the Alethiology, Lambert stakes out a distinctive position on truth and
falsity, arguing that truths cohere or harmonize with other truths and are
dissonant with falsehoods. Lambert does not deny that truth requires that a
cognition correspond with its object. However, establishing the truth of a
cognition is accomplished only by means of its systematic relations to other
(true and false) cognitions. Admittedly, Lambert does not seem to be
particularly clear on how the details of such a view are to be articulated. For
example, he simply suggests that derivative concepts arise from the com-
position of axiomatic concepts, without explaining exactly how compos-
ition is to be understood. To make matters worse, after asserting that
various concepts are axiomatic, he states principles involving these concepts,
but does so without giving any argument as to why these principles must be
true rather than others that would employ the same concepts. Still,
insofar as the systematic relations between axiomatic concepts provide an
a priori condition that experience must satisfy to qualify as science, he has
placed a significant demarcation constraint on science.
Against this background, it is striking that Kant does not explicitly claim
that a priori cognition is required for science, or that science must be
systematic, until after Lambert publishes his Neues Organon. This suggests
that Lambert may have influenced him on both of these central points,
though again, establishing actual influence is a larger task than can be
undertaken here. Yet Kant goes further than Lambert regarding
the requirements that must be met for science. To see at least one of the
additional requirements, we can consider Kant’s conception of science in
more detail.
In the first Critique’s Architectonic of Pure Reason, Kant begins by
saying: “Systematic unity is what first makes ordinary cognition into
science, that is, makes a system out of a mere aggregate of it” (A/
B). This sounds a lot like Lambert. Further, Kant remarks: “I under-
stand by a system, however, the unity of the manifold cognitions under
one idea. This is the rational concept of the form of a whole, insofar as
through this the domain of the manifold as well as the positions of the
parts with respect to each other is determined a priori” (ibid.). Kant
elaborates on the idea of unity as follows:

This aspect of Lambert’s position is discussed in the introduction to Lambert, Texte zur
Systematologie und zur Theore der wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnis, esp. pp. xxxvii–lxxxvi.

Neues Organon, Dianoiology, §.

For a much more negative assessment of the possible influence of Lambert on Kant, see Griffing,
“J. H. Lambert: A Study in the Development of the Critical Philosophy,” pp. –.
Eric Watkins 
The scientific rational concept thus contains the end and the form of the
whole that is congruent with it. The unity of the end, to which all parts are
related and in the idea of which they are also related to each other, allows
the absence of any part to be noticed in our knowledge [Kenntnis] of
the rest, and there can be no contingent addition or undetermined magni-
tude of perfection that does not have its boundaries determined a priori.
The whole is therefore articulated (articulatio) and not heaped (coacervatio);
it can, to be sure, grow internally (per intus susceptionem) but not externally
(per appositionem), like an animal body, whose growth does not add a limb
but rather makes each limb stronger and fitter for its end without any
alteration of its proportion. (A/B)
As Thomas Sturm has noted, Kant’s account of the systematicity of science
includes three features: “unity, structure, and completeness.” A scientific
whole is complete in the sense that one can see whether any essential parts
are missing, and the addition of parts can occur only through internal
growth. It is structured in the sense that the position of the parts with
respect to one another is determined a priori such that it is “articulated”
rather than “heaped.” It is unified in the sense that there is a single end that
provides both structure and completeness (unity and form) for the body
(matter) of cognitions.
Sturm rightly notes that Lambert and Kant agree that structure and
completeness are necessary for systematicity. While there may be differ-
ences in the specific ways in which they foresee those conditions being
satisfied, the general similarity between their views on these points is both
clear and important. Now, Sturm is interested in showing that Kant’s
insistence on unity makes it possible for him to distinguish one science
from another, a kind of external systematicity that is distinct from the kind
of systematicity that is internal to a science. What I want to draw
attention to here is that Kant goes beyond Lambert in attempting to explain
the unity of a system, on which both its structure and its completeness
depend. Lambert has no explicit account of what is responsible for the
structure and completeness of science. Kant, by contrast, asserts that the
scientific rational concept “contains the end and form of the whole.”
But what is this end, and how does it supply the unity and systematicity
that Kant requires for science? The answer to this question is complex, but
its basic structure is determined by Kant’s conception of reason as a
spontaneous faculty that seeks the unconditioned condition of everything
that is conditioned. That is, reason has needs that it attempts to satisfy
 
Sturm, Kant und die Wissenschaften vom Menschen, p. . See ibid., pp. –.

See ibid., pp. –.
 Lambert and Kant on Cognition and Science
by seeking not merely some of the conditions for whatever conditioned
objects it encounters, but the totality of these conditions, which must itself
be unconditioned. To put this point in contemporary terms, reason seeks
an explanation that is complete in the sense of explaining everything and
that neither depends on nor admits of further explanation, such that if it
ever had a truly all-encompassing explanation (with, say, completed sci-
ence), its job would be done and it could rest satisfied. This idea of an
exhaustive explanation of the world and everything in it (i.e., the totality of
conditions) in terms of what is explanatorily bedrock (i.e., the uncondi-
tioned) constitutes reason’s end, which provides unity and completeness to
our scientific inquiry by unifying our different explanations within a single
theoretical framework.
But Kant does not rest content with reason having an end that provides
direction in the pursuit of science (in the guise of regulative principles).
For he is also a proponent of the unity of reason, which ranges over both
theoretical and practical domains. Thus, just as there must be something
unconditioned that could explain what exists in the world, so too there
must be something unconditioned that could explain what ought to be
(including whatever goodness there should be in the world). That is, just as
science tries to make good (complete) sense of the world, so too our
practical reason attempts to make sense of how we should act in the world,
and so we are led by reason to conceive of moral obligation in terms of
imperatives that are categorical, and of a highest good in which happiness
is subordinate (and proportional) to morality. And if we expand our
perspective yet further, Kant ends up maintaining the priority of practical
reason over theoretical reason in such a way that even completed science
(were we ever able to attain it) would have to be subordinated to our moral
ends. Kant thus goes well beyond Lambert in focusing not only on the end
of science, but also on how that end fits into a larger philosophical
framework.
. Conclusion
So, what does this comparison of Lambert’s and Kant’s views on cognition
and its relation to science reveal about the historical and philosophical
significance of Kant’s project in the first Critique? The similarities suggest
that Kant’s break with the philosophical tradition may not be as radical as
he sometimes suggested. Specifically, we have seen that it was not unheard
of in the s to be interested in cognition as a fundamental subject
matter and in how certain kinds of cognition, such as a priori cognition
Eric Watkins 
and the simple non-empirical concepts that it involves, could be necessary
conditions on science, which has a special status that stands in need of
explanation. If their correspondence is to be trusted, Lambert and Kant
both came to the project of explaining the possibility of scientific cognition
on their own. In some ways this conclusion should not surprise, for one
widely accepted narrative of the history of modern philosophy has it that
much interest was devoted to providing a metaphysics and epistemology
that would make sense of the world after the so-called Scientific Revolu-
tion. Lambert and Kant would constitute yet one more chapter in this
story, albeit one with interesting twists, such as their insistence that science
have an a priori element, where a priori is understood in a novel, non-
metaphysical way.
At the same time, it would be inaccurate to suggest that Kant is a mere
follower, and not a leader attempting something quite new. What this
historical comparison lets us see more clearly is what some of the new
elements might be. Of the many plausible candidates – transcendental
idealism, synthetic a priori cognition, etc. – one feature that is both
distinctive of Kant’s project and fundamental to its conception and execu-
tion is his conception of reason. For unlike Lambert, Kant recognized the
necessity of having reason be responsible not only for the unity, but also
for the end of science, as well as the desirability of being able to incorporate
scientific cognition into a broader philosophical perspective that includes
practical philosophy and its demands. In this and many other ways, Kant’s
project is much richer than Lambert’s, though careful study of Lambert’s
views helps one to see its distinctive richness.

Along the way, we identified several points where Lambert might have influenced Kant, but the
evidence in each case seems insufficient to warrant drawing a definitive conclusion.

I thank Corey Dyck and Thomas Sturm for helpful discussion of an earlier version of this paper.
 
Kant and the Skull Collectors:

German Anthropology from Blumenbach to Kant
Jennifer Mensch
It is well known that in the Critique of the Power of Judgment, Kant

included appreciative remarks regarding the work being done by his
German contemporary Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (–).
Blumenbach, a generation theorist who taught medicine and comparative
anatomy in Göttingen, and one of the leading forerunners of German
anthropology in the late eighteenth century, had been in the public eye
since his  publication of De generis humani varietate nativa (On the
Varieties of Mankind). By the time Blumenbach came to publish a revised
edition of this text in , he had also fashioned a new theory of
generation, one relying on a Bildungstrieb, or “formative force,” a force
he described as the agency responsible not only for embryological develop-
ment but, as he would later come to develop it, for understanding the
degeneration of the human species into its distinct varieties or races of
men. It was this force, or Bildungstrieb, that Kant referenced in his Critique
of the Power of Judgment. Kant was appreciative of Blumenbach’s theory of
generation and described his position as a case of “epigenesis” or “generic
preformation,” a theory that “minimizes appeal to the supernatural, and
after the first beginning leaves everything to nature” (CPJ, :). It is for
the most part on the basis of these remarks that Kant’s connection to
Blumenbach has so far been taken up in the scholarly literature.
This essay will lay out the historical case for a broader assessment of
Kant’s relationship to Blumenbach by focusing first on Kant’s review
of Herder in  as the best lens through which to understand not only

Two of the more helpful articles examining Blumenbach’s relationship to Kant from this angle are
Richards’s “Kant and Blumenbach on the Bildungstrieb: A Historical Misunderstanding” and
Zammito’s “The Lenoir Thesis Revisited: Blumenbach and Kant.” My essay is also indebted to
Sloan’s “Buffon, German Biology, and the Historical Interpretation of Biological Species”;
Bernasconi’s “Kant and Blumenbach’s Polyps. A Neglected Chapter in the History of the Concept
of Race”; and Mikkelsen’s editorial apparatus in Kant and the Concept of Race. Late Eighteenth-Century
Writings.

Jennifer Mensch 
their respective theories of generation, but indeed the specific motivation
leading to Kant’s support for Blumenbach at all. The results of this inquiry
will suggest that, while Kant might have been interested in gaining the
support of the rising star of the Göttingen medical faculty, Blumenbach’s
own theories did little to influence Kant’s approach to either generation-
theory or race.
Before turning to any specifics, we should contextualize Kant’s relation-
ship to Blumenbach, a task perhaps best accomplished by way of some-
thing like a timeline. The first evidence we have of Blumenbach’s
knowledge of Kant comes from the second edition of his De generis humani
varietate nativa in , where Kant is grouped alongside other theorists
attempting to determine the precise number of races. Whether Kant was
reading Blumenbach’s work before the mid-s is uncertain. The earli-
est evidence we have is Kant’s reference to Blumenbach in a  essay,
Concerning the Employment of Teleological Principles in philosophy (ETP,
:–), but before turning to that particular passage, it is important to
put it in its immediate historical context, since, as we will see, the players
involved here will be key to understanding Kant’s subsequent relationship
to the German anthropologist.
Between  and , Kant’s former student J. G. Herder published
Parts  and  of his monumental Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der
Menschheit (Outlines of a Philosophy of the History of Man). Kant responded
in  with a series of critical remarks, first while reviewing Part  in
January, then by publishing a reply in March to K. L. Reinhold (who had
referred to Kant’s piece in his own review of the Ideas), and finally in
November by providing another lengthy review, now of Part  (Kant
would beg off reviewing Part  when it appeared in , given his
consuming work on a “critique of taste”). November was the same month
that Kant’s second essay on race was published as well, and if continued
attention on Herder’s own and much different approach to racial

De generis humani varietate nativa was the inaugural dissertation delivered by Blumenbach in Göttingen
in  and published in . It appeared in a second edition in  with minor changes, apart from
its new inclusion of a fifth, brown-skinned race, the “Malay.” References to Kant in  can be found
on pp. , , and . Its third and final edition in  contained major changes, including references
to Kant’s support for Blumenbach in his  essay on teleology (ETP, :) and in Critique of the
Power of Judgment in  (CPJ, :). The  and  editions were translated into English by
Thomas Bendyshe for the Anthropological Society of London as The Anthropological Treatises of Johann
Friedrich Blumenbach (London: Longman, Green, and Roberts, ). All of Blumenbach’s extant
works and translations are available online at www.blumenbach-online.de/fileadmin/wikiuser/Daten_
Digitalisierung/Bibliographie/Bibliographie.html, and I am grateful to Wolfgang Böker in Göttingen
for the additional support and resources he has provided me viz. the Blumenbach archive.
 Kant and the Skull Collectors
difference was not the immediate inspiration, then we can at least say
with certainty that Kant had by then become entirely clear on the points in
his own theory that would need to be emphasized in light of Herder’s
differing account.
Kant raised a number of objections to Herder’s Ideas, but we can focus
for now on the special attention he paid to the number of instances in
Herder’s work where he had appealed to a set of unspecified organic
forces. These were forces running through nature, and they were respon-
sible for not only the formation of individuals and their species lines, but
also their general affinity with all other lines such that there was
“an eternal progression of organic creation” to behold between them
(RHe, :). For Herder, this affinity held between organic and material
substances as well. As Kant summarized it in his review of Part ,
“The more that the one organic principle of nature that we call now
formative (in the rock), now growing (in the plant), now sensitive, now
artificially constructive, and which is fundamentally only one and the
same organic force” (RHe, :), the more we will realize that there is
in fact an “invisible realm of forces, standing in precisely the same
connection and transition, and an ascending series of invisible forces,
just as in the visible realm of creation,” and that indeed “one can regard
humankind as the great flowing together of lower organic forces, which
are to germinate in him into the formation of humanity” (RHe, :).
In the end, as Kant rehearsed it, it was on the basis of this sort of “analogy
of nature,” for Herder, that one could even describe the formation of the
human soul as occurring via “spiritual forces,” and as marking the highest
gradation to be attained by humanity.
For Kant, this was all simply too much. Had Herder not retained any of
the lessons he had seemed to have absorbed so readily in the mid-s as
Kant’s student? These were, after all, precisely the years when Kant
was formulating a critique of speculative approaches in the life sciences
(e.g., Only Possible Argument in ; OPA, :–), chastising the
irresponsible use of forces in both nature and metaphysics (in Dreams of a
Spirit-Seer in ; DSS, :–), and diagnosing the central crisis
facing philosophy to be the result of just such irresponsible use of these
sorts of “subreptive axioms” (in the Inaugural Dissertation in ;
ID, :–). And as for a continuous gradation or “scale of nature”
between beings, Kant had just again reminded his readers of the special
kind of illusions this idea could generate (in Critique of Pure Reason in
; A/B). It comes as no surprise, therefore, that Kant closed his
review of Part  with a lecture to his former student regarding the dangers
Jennifer Mensch 
of speculation and the futility of wanting “to explain what one does not
comprehend from what one comprehends even less” (RHe, :).
Given Kant’s longstanding critique of hylozoism, he would have been
particularly incensed by Herder’s appeal to organic forces running through
all creation, but in his review, Kant was most concerned by what this would
mean for species (and, by extension, racial) fixity. Without an account of
the specific means by which form could be both instantiated at the level
of the individual and maintained across the history of the species, the result,
from Kant’s perspective, was a veritable chaos, a world “where either one
species would have arisen from the other and all from a single original
species or perhaps from a single procreative maternal womb,” a situation
“so monstrous that reason recoils” before it (RHe, :).
The dramatic nature of Kant’s response on this point would catch the
attention of Reinhold, who in turn scolded Kant in his own review of
Herder’s Ideas with the comment, “Healthy reason left to its own freedom
recoils from no idea.” In his March rejoinder, Kant repaid the remark, and
while quoting Reinhold back to himself took the opportunity to further
elaborate the point against Herder, exclaiming, “It is merely the horror
vacui of universal human reason, namely, to recoil where one runs up
against an idea in which nothing at all can be thought, and in this regard the
ontological codex might well serve as a canon for the theological, and
indeed precisely for the sake of tolerance” (RHe, :). Kant was hardly
immune to the attractions posed by this sort of mental adventure – indeed,
he had documented its connection to physical-theology as early as  –
but he understood as well that without categories to stabilize our experi-
ence of the world, both science and metaphysics would be lost.
Between the riposte in March and the appearance of his review of Part 
of Herder’s Ideas, Kant began work on his second essay on racial differ-
ence, the Determination of the Concept of a Human Race (HR, :–),
which appeared in that November’s issue of the Berlinische Monatsschrift.
On November , Kant sent off his Conjectural Beginning of Human History
(CBHH, :–) for publication – a text that was widely understood to

In Dreams of a Spirit-Seer (DSS, :–), Kant discusses the appeal of a “principle of life” for
understanding organic processes: “I must confess that I am very much inclined to assert the existence
of immaterial natures in the world, and to place my own soul in the class of these beings . . . The
reason which inclines me to this view is very obscure even to myself, and it will probably remain so,
as well. It is a reason which applies at the same time to the sentient being of animals. The principle of
life is to be found in something in the world which seems to be of an immaterial nature. For all life is
based upon the inner capacity to determine itself voluntarily [nach Willkür]” (ibid., :–).

See also Helbig and Nassar on this point in “The Metaphor of Epigenesis: Kant, Blumenbach and
Herder.”
 Kant and the Skull Collectors
be, in part, a satire of Book  of Herder’s Ideas. But November  was also
the day that Kant received Part  of the Ideas, and he seems to have put
together his review of it almost upon receipt, since it appeared one week
later, in the November  issue of the Allgemeine Literaturzeitung.
Kant’s review of Part  began with a quick rehearsal of the main topics
covered by Herder in Books –. This was followed by an unflattering set
of remarks on Herder’s “poetical spirit,” with Kant wondering out loud
“whether here and there synonyms have not been allowed to count as
explanations and allegories for truths; whether instead of there being
neighboring passages from the domain of philosophical language into the
precinct of poetical language, the boundaries and proper dominions of
both have not been completely displaced,” and so on (RHe, :). These
were hardly words to mollify Herder, who had been deeply stung by Kant’s
January review, writing in its aftermath to tell his friend Johann Georg
Hamann that he should henceforth refrain from mentioning any of
Herder’s doings to Kant, calling the review “malicious, distorting, meta-
physical, and entirely removed from the spirit of the book from beginning
to end,” and describing Kant himself as “malicious and infantile” for
taking the opening discussions of Herder’s work for the whole.
It was in this letter that Herder also told Hamann that he had read
Kant’s  Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim (IUH,
:–) just before discovering the identity of his reviewer. It might have
been predicted, therefore, that Herder would single out this text for
scrutiny, and indeed, Part  of the Ideas included not just a critique of
efforts (e.g., Kant’s) to describe the natural state of mankind as one of
antagonism and hostility, but a lengthy defense of human happiness and
tranquility, singling out the “happy islanders” as special examples of this.
It was to these remarks that Kant thus offered his most focused set of
criticisms in his review of Part . For against Herder’s promotion of the
tranquil simplicity enjoyed by islanders, Kant insisted, just as he had in
Universal History, that humans must strive to be worthy of happiness and
that it was indeed in humanity’s striving toward progressive improvement
that mankind’s worth ultimately lay: “what if the genuine end of provi-
dence were not this shadowy image of happiness,” Kant asked, “but rather
the always proceeding and growing activity and culture that is put in play
by it, whose greatest possible degree is only the product of a state
 
Biographical details are in Kuehn, Kant, pp. –. Reprinted in ibid., pp. –.

These themes run throughout Book ; see Herder, Outlines of a Philosophy of the History of Man,
trans. T. Churchill.
Jennifer Mensch 
constitution ordered in accordance with concepts of human right,
and consequently something that can be a work of humans themselves?”
(RHe, :). It was on the heels of this comment, moreover, that Kant
went on to say that had the “happy inhabitants of Tahiti” been destined
only to live lives of “tranquil indolence” so eloquently described by
Herder, then there simply would be no explanation for their existence,
given what Kant understood the aims of providence to be. As he put it,
there would be no sense of “whether it would not have been just as good
to have this island populated with happy sheep and cattle as with human
beings who are happy merely enjoying themselves,” adding, enigmatically,
“that principle is therefore not as evil as the author thinks – Even though
it might have been an evil man who said it” (RHe, :).
Apart from this important exchange regarding Kant’s teleological
approach in Universal History, Kant was concerned again to pick up on the
theme of generation and, given that his second essay on race had just
appeared in that month’s issue of the Berlinische Monatsschrift, unsurprisingly
now also on the issue of race. Here Kant’s comments neatly brought together
ideas that by  had already been long in the making. In the review,
Kant began by acknowledging, with Herder, the frustrations associated
with the frequently conflicting accounts provided by travelers’ reports,
reports in which, for example, one might learn “that Americans and Negroes
are each a race, sunk beneath the remaining members of the human species in
their mental predispositions, but on the other side and just as apparent
records that as regards their natural predispositions, they are to be estimated
equal to every other inhabitant of the world” (RHe, :). Noting after
this that Herder rejected a division of the human species into races, and
particularly a division of such according to color (i.e., Kant’s method),
“presumably because the concept of a race is for him not distinctly enough
determined,” Kant offered a reformulation of Herder’s account of the
“genetic force” by which climate had been able to produce such different
appearances in the human species. “The reviewer has the following concept
of the meaning of this expression in the author’s mind,” Kant began,
He wants to dismiss on the one side the system of evolution and yet also
on the other side the mere mechanical influences of external causes as

Note that Kant included “rusting talents” as one of the four iconic examples of failed duty in the
Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals of  (G, :–). The foundational years for the long
and complicated relationship between Kant and Herder are detailed by Zammito in Kant, Herder,
and the Birth of Anthropology. Sikka focuses on their later exchanges in Herder on Humanity and
Cultural Difference.
 Kant and the Skull Collectors
providing unworkable grounds of elucidation, and he assumes as its cause a
principle of life, which appropriately modifies itself internally in accordance
with differences of the external circumstances; with this the reviewer fully
concurs, only with this reservation, that if the cause organizing itself from
within were limited by its nature only perhaps to a certain number and
degree of differences in the formation of a creature (so that after the
institution of which, it were not further free to form yet another type under
altered circumstances), then one could call this natural determination of
the forming nature [diese Naturbestimmung der bildende Natur] also “germs”
or “original predispositions,” without thereby regarding the former as
primordially implanted machines and buds that unfold themselves only
when occasioned as in the system of evolution, but merely as limitations,
not further explicable, of a self-forming faculty, which latter we can just as
little explain or make comprehensible. (RHe, :–)
In order to make full sense of this, we will need to briefly turn to Kant’s
pre-Critical writings, but we can see already that in his response, Kant is
both highlighting established theories of generation – “evolution” theory
versus a self-modifying genetic force or principle of life – and identifying a
crucial need for the latter to account for the formal stability of both species
lines and, in this case specifically, the races of mankind. Here Kant
suggests the use of terms he employed in his  essay on race (ODR,
:–), though now combined as “germs or original predispositions”
with the use of a disjunctive. In , these had specified different
biological tasks and their ontological status was left unclear; in , Kant
was explicit regarding the grounds for their new isomorphism so far as they
were meant only to indicate “limitations, not further explicable, of a self-
forming faculty, which latter we can just as little explain or make
comprehensible.”
Kant had, in fact, long considered inquiries in the life sciences, particu-
larly those regarding generation, to be essentially closed off from inquiry.
Physics was easily reducible to a set of mechanical causes, but already in
 Kant had asked, “Can we claim such advantages about the most
insignificant plant or insect? Are we in a position to say: Give me matter
and I will show you how a caterpillar can be created? Do we not get stuck at
the first step due to ignorance about the true inner nature of the object and
the complexity of the diversity contained in it?” (UNH, :). The
problem of generation was simply too complex, and our ignorance
regarding its processes too complete, to admit any kind of certainty akin
to that achieved in the physical sciences.
In  Kant returned to the question, this time examining with greater
attention both the nature of the problem and the suggested routes for
Jennifer Mensch 
understanding it. For our purposes, it is enough to identify the options as
Kant reported on them. And to simplify matters, it is also enough to just
say that at mid-century there were essentially two strategies for approach-
ing the problem of generation, and that the key to finding any sympathy
for either of these theories is to understand the difficulty of their task. First,
a theory had to explain the source of form: what was the plan by which
material turned into a recognizable member of a species, where did such a
plan come from, and how was it specifically related to matter? Second,
a theory had to describe the means by which the plan was enacted: was it
by mechanical processes, by gravitational, magnetic, or organic forces, or
even just via direct action by God? The task, in other words, was daunting,
and it was easy to understand why Leibniz, for example, had called for the
rehabilitation of the discredited notion of an entelechy when facing it.
In the s, researchers were divided between a theory that resolved
the problem of form and one that focused instead on the problem of
understanding the forces responsible for the generation, growth, and repair
of individuals according to their form. Without some kind of intelligent
agency such as a soul or entelechy to guide formation, the dominant view
took the best explanation to be that all forms had been set by God at the
point of creation. In the earliest and most enduring instantiation of this
view, theorists argued that God had in fact created each individual at the
beginning of the world, leaving nature only the task of a mechanical
expansion of these “preexistent” individuals over time. The main line of
attack on this theory came from researchers pointing to cases of joint
inheritance. If the preexistent individual had been formed at the beginning
of time, they argued, then this individual must already be complete.
How, then, they asked, could preexistence theory account for phenomena
exhibiting joint inheritance, such as that displayed by mixed-race children?
This was a potent line of attack, but those who emphasized instead the
motion of forces – be they mechanical, organic, or just general “principles
of life” – faced an equally important counterattack regarding their inability
to explain the source of form.
When Kant rehearsed the options as he saw them in , he was
sensitive to the difficulties facing theorists on all sides. Remarking that

The history of the various debates regarding organic generation is complicated, but has been dealt
with extensively. I describe Kant’s relationship to the life sciences of his day in Kant’s Organicism, but
for a general overview, three places to start are Roger, The Life Sciences in Eighteenth-Century French
Thought; Gasking, Investigations into Generation –; and Roe, Matter, Life, and Generation.
Justin Smith’s edited collection on The Problem of Animal Generation in Early Modern Philosophy is
also helpful.
 Kant and the Skull Collectors
“it would be absurd to regard the initial generation of a plant or an animal
as a mechanical effect incidentally arising from the universal laws of
nature,” Kant considered two theories of generation in turn. The first
was preexistence theory, which, as Kant put it, demanded that “each
individual member of the plant and animal kingdoms is directly formed
by God, and thus of supernatural origin, with only the propagation
[Fortpflanzung], that is, only the transition from time to time to the
unfolding [Auswicklung] of individuals being entrusted to a natural law”
(OPA, :). The second theory represented an intermediate position,
for it appealed to God’s original agency when producing species lines – a
type of generic, as opposed to individual, preformation guaranteeing the
reproduction of kinds – but it argued also for the subsequent generation
of individuals according to nonsupernatural means. Is it possible, Kant
asked when introducing this option, that “some individual members of the
plant and animal kingdoms, whose origin is indeed directly divine, none-
theless possess the capacity, which we cannot understand, to actually
generate [erzeugen] their own kind in accordance with a regular law of
nature, and not merely to unfold [auszuwickeln] them?” (OPA, :).
Kant went on to rehearse positions that would seem to be examples of
this, all the while being critical of the specific attempts made in each case to
provide a description of the means by which individuals would be subse-
quently generated (OPA, :). But while Kant rejected such accounts as
“utterly unintelligible” and “entirely arbitrary inventions,” he was equally
resistant to the first hypothesis and its recourse to a supernatural origin for
every individual member of a species. On this theory, human investigation
was completely foreclosed, though it could be, as Kant remarked, “sup-
posed that the natural philosophers have been left with something when
they are permitted to toy with the problem of the manner of gradual
reproduction [Fortpflanzung]” (OPA, :). What Kant wanted was a
means of avoiding a supernatural solution even if all of the contrasting
accounts of individual generation had so far failed. Indeed, as Kant wryly
observed, an adequate mechanical explanation of fermenting yeast had yet
to be found, but that had hardly led people to suggest supernatural
grounds for its existence; the case of plants and animals should be no

In Herder’s notes from Kant’s lectures on metaphysics during this period, it is clear that, without
naming them, Kant could have understood the specific difficulty facing preexistence and epigenesis
to be the lack of any decisive evidence in favor of one position over the other (MH, :). As
Herder reported it, the main conceptual difficulty facing the life sciences was twofold, at least so far
as Kant understood their attempt to discern the processes of generation, namely the conception of
freedom, on the one hand, and its generation in the world, on the other.
Jennifer Mensch 
different. Unless one was willing to rely on a continuous divine agency,
Kant concluded, “there must be granted to the initial divine organization
of plants and animals a capacity, not merely to develop [Auswickelung]
their kind thereafter in accordance with a natural law, but truly to generate
[erzeugen] their kind” (OPA, :).
This two-step solution began with an “initial divine organization” of the
species lines – a move that was meant by Kant to keep the “tincture of the
supernatural” to a bare minimum – that was then followed by nature’s
capacity to exhibit thereafter a set of law-like processes by which individ-
uals could actively generate successive members of a species line according
to their type. It was a solution that relied on much the same strategy that
Kant would offer as a corrective to Herder’s account in . For there,
too, Kant suggested that he could agree with Herder’s attention to the
organic force at work in natural productions so long as “the cause organiz-
ing itself from within were limited by its nature only perhaps to a certain
number and degree of differences in the formation of a creature (so that
after the institution of which, it were not further free to form yet another
type under altered circumstances),” and also so long as the means by which
these limitations of the “self-forming faculty” occurred remained outside
the bounds of knowledge (RHe, : –).
This was also on display when Kant put together his first essay on race as
part of an announcement for his physical geography course in  (later
revising it for publication in ). In the account of Of the Different
Races of Human Beings (ODR, :–), Kant appealed to “germs

Kant’s announcement: “Of the Different Races of Human Beings to Announce the Lectures on
Physical Geography of Immanuel Kant, Professor Ordinarius of Logic and Metaphysics.”
The Academy edition of Kant’s course announcement offers an amalgamation of two editions.
The opening and closing paragraphs directly concern details of the course and are from ; the
body of Kant’s piece, however, comes from the  edition, which is the version published by
Cambridge in Anthropology, History, and Education (ODR, :–). Kant had prepared the
separate, expanded version of the essay for J. J. Engel, Der Philosoph für die Welt (), part ,
pp. –. Although Kant was invited by the publisher and book merchant Johann Breitkopf to
prepare an extended treatment for inclusion in an anthology, he declined in , explaining that
his “views would have to be expanded and the play of races among animals and plant species
considered explicitly, which would require too much attention from me and necessitate new and
extensive reading rather outside my field, since natural history is not my specialty but only a hobby
and my principle aim with respect to it is to use it to extend and correct our knowledge of mankind”
(Corr, :). When Engel wrote to Kant the following year to see if Kant might have changed his
mind (Corr, :–), he replied that he had since read Zimmermann’s Geographische Geschichte
des Menschen () and would have to engage in further reflection on the issue (Corr, :).
Zimmermann had explicitly discussed both Kant’s  essay on race and Blumenbach’s 
De generis, so we might see this as our first evidence of Kant’s awareness of Blumenbach’s work.
A translation of selections from Zimmermann’s text with extensive explanatory information is in
Mikkelsen, Kant and the Concept of Race.
 Kant and the Skull Collectors
[Keime]” and “dispositions [Anlagen]” as the specific means by which
organisms were able to adapt in the face of environmental pressures or
“occasioning causes.” As mentioned earlier, in Kant’s initial presentation
of this, the terms represented discrete biological functions: germs were
responsible for the generation of new parts (more hair or feathers in
winter), whereas dispositions modified existing parts (the thicker protective
chaff of wheat in winter). Despite such specificity, however, the onto-
logical status of these germs and dispositions went unstated in the text,
given that Kant had positioned the inquiry as a whole in terms of the need
to secure an explanation of natural phenomena that seemed to be other-
wise inexplicable on the basis of either physics or chance alone. This
seemed especially true in the case of the human species, given that, unlike
any other species, it appeared to have the adaptive capacity to inhabit each
and every reach and extreme offered up by the planet. For Kant, it was
impossible to imagine that chance alone could have prepared the species
for such geographic distribution in the first place, let alone allowed for the
unity of the species across such a diversity of its appearance. Indeed, it was
precisely on the basis of this diversity that polygenists had in part waged
their argument for there having been different points of origin for the
species of mankind. Given his support for Buffon’s interfertility criterion
for species membership, Kant was committed to the monogenesis of the
species. His task was thus to explain such phenomena without recourse to
the polygenesis solution. And he did so by appealing to germs and
dispositions not as actual biological entities, but rather in light of the need
to explain human distribution and its adaptive results in a manner that was
non-haphazard; in a manner, in other words, that was purposive so far as
we could understand our capacity to adapt as Nature’s special “provision”
on behalf of humanity (ODR, :–).
In Kant’s review of Herder, his point regarding the need to explain form
and the stability of the species lines in nature was similar to that regarding
the need to explain both the fact of human diversity and the stability of
this diversity in the races of humankind. When Kant returned to the
question in his  essay on the Determination of the Concept of Human
Race (HR, :–), he was at pains to explain the stability of the race
concept in the face of contrasting accounts. In , Kant had been ready
to name the four main races as he understood them to be products of
environmental forces – climate, nutrition, geography (e.g., the specific
mineral or chemical content of water, soil, and air) – and his choices
followed Linnaeus in identifying the races in the older terms set by
humoral theory. Adaptation was explained by the existence of germs and
Jennifer Mensch 
dispositions, but racial stability was maintained so far as these germs, once
realized, were then both set and passed on from parent to child. It was
Kant’s identification of color as the main racial biomarker that opened him
up to challenges. As Linnaeus had by then taught generations of natural
theorists, the main question for determining the difference between a
species and a variety turned on the constancy of traits. And color, as many
pointed out, seemed to be especially variable when looking at the spectrum
of human appearance as a whole. As Herder would express it in Part  of
the Ideas:
In short, there are neither four or five races, nor exclusive varieties, on this
earth. Complexions run into each other: forms follow the genetic character,
and upon the whole, all are at last but shades of the same great picture,
extending through all ages, and over all parts of the Earth. They belong not,
therefore, to properly systematic natural history, as to the physico-
geographical history of the map.
But Kant not only remained undeterred in his effort to provide a stable
taxonomy for the races, he in fact adopted Linnaeus’s requirement so far as
to spend his time in the  essay emphasizing the constancy of racial
traits and describing an empirical test for race in terms of the “unfailing
heredity” of racial color (HR, :). Such strategy aside, Kant had still
moved well past Linnaeus’s own classification system regarding the var-
ieties of men (not to mention Herder’s dismissal of these), for by embra-
cing the interfertility criterion, Kant had moved from the “school system of
the description of nature,” which concerned itself only with the external
“marks” of a creature, to a genuine natural history of species by paying
attention instead to the unfailing inheritance of traits within a phyletic line
or a given race from its point of origin (ODR, :; HR, :).
If Kant’s second account of race had not been enough to inspire a
response, then the appearance of his Conjectural Beginning of Human
History (CBHH, :–) in the following January’s issue of the
Teutscher Merkur seems to have been the last straw for Georg Forster,
who cited them both together when attacking Kant later that year in the
same journal. Though still quite young, in  Forster was easily one of
the more famous German naturalists of the era, and the ensuing dispute
between him and Kant quickly brought Kant’s theories of generation and
race to the attention of a wide audience of medical faculty and other life
science theorists engaged in the issues. Forster’s fame had come with the

Herder, Outlines of a Philosophy of a History of Man, p. .
 Kant and the Skull Collectors
highly successful publication of his two-volume account of the Voyage
Round the World () that he and his father had taken with Captain
James Cook, on Cook’s second voyage to the South Pacific from –.
Johann Forster, Georg’s father, had been the ship’s naturalist, and the two
had worked together collecting samples and annotating their catalog with
careful observations of the lands, creatures, and people they came across
during the expedition. Forster published a German translation of his travel
narrative in , and it was due to these volumes that he quickly came
into contact with the leading naturalists at work in Germany and then
secured his successive academic positions as a professor of natural history,
first in Kassel (–) and then at the University of Vilnius (–).
Forster’s closest friend during these years was the Mainz anatomist Samuel
Soemmerring, and once Forster realized that Vilnius would never become
the center for natural history that he had hoped it would be when he
moved there, he relocated to Mainz and worked there as the university
librarian (–) until his political activities in support of the Jacobins
took his energies to Paris, where he died at the age of thirty-nine in .
Forster’s connection to Soemmerring is important, for it reminds us of
the ways in which the “Negro” body – the skin, the morphological
shape of the skeleton, and especially the skull in terms of its cranial
capacity and the shape of its jawline and brow – performed a number
of roles in German science at this time. The relative indifference with
which Blumenbach catalogued the results of Soemmerring’s work in
his  review of Soemmerring’s Über die körperliche Verschiedenheit
des Mohren vom Europäer (On the Bodily Difference between Moors and
Europeans) might have irritated Forster in defense of his friend, but its
bland catalog remains nonetheless instructive regarding a broader effort on
the part of anthropologists to generate a reliable biometric science for
analyzing racial differences. While each investigator had his preferred
barometer for racial difference – skin color (Kant), facial angle (Camper),
cranial capacity (Soemmerring), skull dimensions (Zimmermann,

Soemmerring’s inaugural dissertation at Mainz was an anatomical work entitled Über die körperliche
Verschiedenheit des Mohren vom Europäer (), which he dedicated to Forster. This was
republished in  with “Negroes” replacing “Moors” in the title and came to be regarded as a
definitive text on the subject.

Blumenbach’s review for the Göttingische Anzeigen von gelehrten Sachen appeared in the year’s first
volume, January , , pp. –. In June , Forster wrote to Soemmerring regarding both
his dislike of Kant’s essay on race and the tone taken in Blumenbach’s review of Soemmerring’s
dissertation (see Mikkelsen, Kant and the Concept of Race, p. ). Noting this, Norbert Klatt, the
editor of Blumenbach’s correspondence, sees Forster’s response to Kant’s piece as also containing a
veiled critique of Blumenbach. See Klatt, “Johann Friedrich Blumenbach als ungenannter Gegner.”
Jennifer Mensch 
Blumenbach), brain tissue (Meiners) – the goals were various. Some
researchers believed in the monogenesis of the human species (Kant,
Soemmerring, Camper, Blumenbach), and some turned to morphological
features (Zimmermann, Soemmerring, Camper, Blumenbach) or
interfertility (Kant, Girtanner) to establish racial boundaries, even while
arguing for the unity of the species across racial lines. This argument could
be established on the back of an empirical search for a uniquely human
trait – the compactness of the mucous membrane, to use Blumenbach’s
example – that would distinguish species members from the apes. Or it
could be led by a theoretical notion, as in the case of Camper’s efforts to
find evidence for a transcendental morphology or archetype revealed
by each member of a given species. At the same time, there were research-
ers who remained unconvinced regarding the empirical evidence for the
monogenesis of the species, and proposed either the likelihood of polygen-
esis (Forster) or its fact (Voltaire, Kames, Meiners). And all of this was
complicated by respective beliefs in a hierarchy of the races, whether that
was in terms of beauty (Forster, Blumenbach) or mental disposition
(Soemmerring, Camper, Kant), and by respective attitudes toward the
abolition of the slave trade, whether on grounds that were egalitarian
(Blumenbach), commercial (Kant), humane (Herder), or due to a sense
of moral duties regarding stewardship over one’s inferiors (Forster).
In , Forster published his response to Kant in two parts under the title
“Noch etwas über den Menschenrasse” (“Something more about the human
races”). Although this review has typically been glossed as an empiricist’s
rejection of Kant’s transcendental approach, such a view is in fact incorrect,
for it was Kant’s empirical test for species membership that drew Forster’s
attention. This is not to say that Forster was not also critical of Kant’s
armchair reliance on secondhand accounts for developing his anthropological
views, but apart from those researchers actually engaged in the messy business
of comparative anatomy, few naturalists at the time could compare to Forster
in terms of the breadth of his own empirical experience with foreign peoples.
Even Blumenbach had adjusted his initial theory of the varieties of man in
light of Forster’s report on Cook’s voyage to the South Pacific.
For our purposes, it is enough to note Forster’s central complaint
regarding Kant’s commitment to the unfailing inheritance of color as a test
for racial makeup. In Forster’s experience, human color variation proceeded
along a spectrum that seemed to be wholly determined by climactic forces
and geographic location. How could Kant know whether nature had indeed

This piece is translated by Mikkelsen in Kant and the Concept of Race, pp. –.
 Kant and the Skull Collectors
given humans the capacity to adapt only once? Why not assume instead that
humans were capable of a “second transplanting,” or a third, etc.? The time
frames for such investigations were too compressed, Forster argued, to say for
certain that black Africans would not in fact turn white when transplanted
to European soil. Kant’s attention to mixed-race children as an empirical test
case for the inheritance of race was equally problematic. If we were to
take members at the nearest extremes of any given race and have them
reproduce, Forster argued, the “brown” color of the children would not
signify in any meaningful way what their racial makeup might be.
“My friend,” Forster suggested at this point, “[if you] want to survey in a
compressed summation how it is we actually arrive at a determination of
the distinguishing differences within human kind, then you should read
Soemmerring’s ‘On the Bodily Difference of Negroes from Europeans.’”
These comments shed light on how Kant chose to enlist Blumenbach’s
expertise when writing a response to Forster in Concerning the Employment
of Teleological Principles in Philosophy in  (ETP, :–). While
Kant took time to parse Forster’s criticisms as a demonstration of the
difficulty, but not the impossibility, of using skin color as a test for racial
inheritance (ETP, :–), on the whole, his piece was oriented by his
long-held insistence regarding the need for natural historical investigations
to be mindful of the limits of human understanding, limits which, when
unheeded, led investigators always “from the fertile soil of the investigation
of nature to the desert of metaphysics” (ETP, :). The key to epistemic
safety in such matters relied on an acknowledgment of the different kinds
of appeals made by investigators in their research. Empirically verifiable
claims were of one kind; as to appeals to final causes or purposes more
generally, these either were offered as a deliberately chosen “teleological
mode of explanation” or were guilty of enlisting precisely the kind of
subreptive axioms that had so far littered the history of dogmatic
metaphysics. Thus Soemmerring, as Kant read him, had misinterpreted
his own results. For while there simply could be no empirical basis to the
claim that the anatomy of the Negroes had suited them, in contrast to
other races, to their land, one could on teleological grounds suggest that
their skin had been a necessary adaptation for dealing with both the sun
and the “noxious” chemicals in the African water and air (ETP, :).

Forster, “Something more about the human races,” translated in Mikkelsen, p. . Forster urged
Kant to consult also Camper and Herder (!) for edification. He later apologized for the tone taken in
this piece, however, blaming it on a physical indisposition affecting everything he had produced that
year (Corr, :).
Jennifer Mensch 
As for Forster, he was guilty of a mistake along the same lines as Herder
not only in emphasizing a gradation of forms in nature, but in proposing a
creation story without any attention to the clear demarcations necessary for
ensuring the reproductive stability of the species lines. And so, after
quoting Forster’s account, whereby “[t]he earth in labour, which let
originate animals and plants, without being generated by beings of their
own kind, from the soft mother’s womb fructified by sea mud, the local
generations based thereupon, when Africa produced its human beings
(the Negroes), Asia its human beings (all others)” (ETP, :), Kant
referred readers to an “insightful man” who agreed with him in rejecting
precisely these points. This reference to Blumenbach was clearly a tactical
maneuver on Kant’s part, since by pointing to the other star associated with
Göttingen, he was not only bolstering his own position but informing
Blumenbach that on this issue he, in fact, belonged on Kant’s side. For as
Kant pointed out in a footnoted remark, Blumenbach had already issued a
stinging critique of Bonnet’s notion of a chain of being and, like Kant, had
rejected hylozism by specifying “the formative drive, through which he
brought so much light into the doctrine of generations” as belonging
“not to inorganic matter but only to the members of organized beings”
(ETP, :).
Kant’s footnote had its effect, for Blumenbach repaid the favor by
sending the second edition of his Bildungstrieb essay to Kant as a gift.
And Kant, in turn, had his publisher send Blumenbach a copy of the
Critique of the Power of Judgment, followed by a personal letter thanking
him for his essay, and telling him, “I have found much instruction in your
writings, but the latest of them has a close relationship to the ideas that
preoccupy me: the union of two principles that people have believed to be
irreconcilable, namely the physical-mechanistic and the merely teleological
way of explaining organized nature. Factual confirmation is exactly what
this union of the two principles needs” (Corr, :). What is particularly
interesting here is not Kant’s compliment, but rather his corrective regarding
Blumenbach’s notion. For Blumenbach, at this point certainly, but prob-
ably later as well, was not advancing a “teleological” way of explaining
organized nature. On the contrary, he explicitly understood the Bildungs-
trieb to be working constitutively in the case of organic life. As with

Blumenbach, Über den Bildungstrieb, nd edn., .

Richards describes this in “Kant and Blumenbach on the Bildungstrieb.” A careful reconstruction of
Blumenbach’s evolving approach to the Bildungstrieb is in McLaughlin, “Blumenbach und der
Bildungstrieb: Zum Verhältnis von epigenetischer Embryologie und typologischen Artbegriff.”
 Kant and the Skull Collectors
Kant’s response to Herder, therefore, we must recognize Kant’s coaching
here regarding the proper approach to notions of a “formative drive.”
Kant was even more explicit in the third Critique. For after surveying
the field of contemporary anthropology – with implicit nods to the
discoveries yielded by comparative anatomists like Zimmermann and
Soemmerring, to Camper’s archetype, and even to the notion of a primor-
dial womb of the kind described by Herder and Forster – Kant reminded
readers that all of this presupposed an “original organization that itself uses
mechanism” for the subsequent conveyance of an initially organized form
(CPJ, :–). And not only this; once the forms or original organiza-
tions had been established and local adaptations made, investigators had to
assume that the species lines had been set if there was to be any hope for
establishing natural history as a taxonomical and, also important, a genea-
logical science founded on the stable inheritance of traits. Thus, even the
chaotic womb of mother earth was understood to have eventually “rigidi-
fied, ossified, and confined itself to bearing definite species that would no
longer degenerate, so that diversity remained as it had turned out when
that fertile formative force ceased to operate” (CPJ, :). Kant could not
have been clearer regarding the need to maintain form within species lines,
but he was just as clear when it came to the epistemic status of this
investigation.
It was thus in the next section, fittingly entitled “On the association of
mechanism with the teleological principle in the explanation of a natural
end as a product of nature,” that Kant discussed Blumenbach’s Bildungs-
trieb. Here, as in the  essay, Kant offered praise for Blumenbach’s
rejection of hylozoism, but now also for the epistemic modesty with which
Blumenbach had left the precise workings of the informing of nature
“inscrutable,” even as he had nonetheless rejected the preexistence theory
of generation for its failure to account for joint inheritance. Kant was
careful, however, in how he positioned his support for the Bildungstrieb,
offering once more a corrected version of it. For while Blumenbach had
not (or not yet) considered the notion to be also teleological in its effort to
describe organic generation, he had also effectively sidestepped the con-
ceptual problem of linking form and force. In Blumenbach’s presentation
of the matter, form was a given, not a problem to be resolved. Kant
offered, therefore, a significant emendation when aligning Blumenbach’s
force with his preferred theory of “epigenesis” or “generic preformation,”

This was, of course, Caspar Wolff’s great complaint against Blumenbach. See Roe, Matter, Life, and
Generation, especially pp.  and .
Jennifer Mensch 
according to which “the productive power of the generating beings, and
therefore the form of the species, was preformed virtualiter in the intrinsic
purposive predispositions imparted to the stock” (CPJ, :).
Kant’s support for Blumenbach must be recognized for what it was:
a published endorsement that not only was extremely rare in Kant’s works,
particularly for a living contemporary, but, moreover, was not relegated to a
passing footnote, but whose significance meant its inclusion in the main
body of the text. It comes as no surprise, therefore, to learn of Blumen-
bach’s ecstatic response (Corr, :). This was sent along with
Blumenbach’s return gift, a copy of his newly published Beyträge zur
Naturgeschichte (Contributions to Natural History). The copy was carried
by Kant’s one-time amanuensis, Johann Jachmann, a medical student who
was traveling back to Königsberg from the university in Edinburgh with his
roommate, Christoph Girtanner. It was , and the pair had traveled
through revolutionary France, stopping at Mainz, where they met Soem-
merring and Forster, before staying in Göttingen for some weeks. Kant’s
letter of introduction opened doors for Jachmann, as he visited with
Blumenbach and attended Lichtenburg’s lectures. But here the person to
notice was the roommate, Girtanner. It was Girtanner who later received
endorsements from Kant (Anth, :) and Blumenbach, for his effort to
marry Kant’s account of the germs and dispositions responsible for main-
taining the species lines to Blumenbach’s Bildungstrieb as the means by
which these forms could be instantiated in individual members. As for
Blumenbach, Kant’s corrective to the Bildungstrieb appeared to have
worked. For in subsequent discussions, Blumenbach never failed
to include references to Kant’s endorsements in  and , and
Blumenbach even began to describe his own position in terms of its
joining together the “physic-mechanical with the purely teleological.”

Blumenbach, Beyträge zur Naturgeschichte (vol. , Göttingen, ; nd edn., ; vol. ,
Göttingen, ). The  edition is translated by Thomas Bendyshe in The Anthropological
Treatises of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach; however, the  edition sent to Kant contains
significant differences, particularly regarding the amount of supporting empirical evidence
amassed by Blumenbach to demonstrate the manner in which Negroes are equal to the other
races in their capacity for feeling, intelligence, business acumen, music, and even philosophy. We
cannot be certain that Kant received this piece, however, since it was sent to him via Johann
Jachmann, who explained in a letter to Kant that he would give it to him later, since Kant probably
already had a copy (Corr, :). There is no indication in Warda’s inventory of Kant’s books that
Kant did own a copy, though this is neither singular nor definitive regarding such matters.

Blumenbach, Handbuch der Naturgeschichte (), p. .

See Girtanner, Über das Kantische Prinzip für die Naturgeschichte (). Further discussion of this
is in Sloan, “Buffon, German biology, and the historical interpretation of biological species.”

For example, Institutions of Physiology (), trans. Elliotson, p. .
 Kant and the Skull Collectors
And while Blumenbach never adopted Kant’s empirical test for racial
difference, he softened his earlier stance against a reliance on color in line
with Kant’s  response to Forster. And Kant? Kant mentioned
Blumenbach only a few times again, and these in passing, grouping
Blumenbach’s discussion of the early revolutions undergone by the earth
with similar observations made by Camper. We must conclude, therefore,
that when all was said and done, this was not a case of “historical misun-
derstanding,” at least not on Kant’s part. Kant was clear regarding the value
of Blumenbach’s support, and indeed the role he played in German
anthropology. Blumenbach was a scientist Kant had hoped to shape in line
with his own views on generation and race, and the history shows that, to a
real extent, Kant was successful in achieving this goal.

See, for example, his  essay on the varieties of men; The Anthropological Treatises of Johann
Friedrich Blumenbach, p. .

See Anth, :; CF, :; R , :. By comparison, see a  letter to Kant from a former
student, Lehmann, who tells him of Blumenbach’s urging regarding the publication of his lectures
on physical geography so that others might benefit from them as Blumenbach had, particularly with
respect to Kant’s account of race (Corr, :–).
 
Kant and Crusius on the Role of

Immortality in Morality
Paola Rumore
. Kant and Crusius

The central role played by Christian August Crusius in the development of
Kant’s early thought has often been stressed in Kant scholarship, even before
the recent ‘rediscovery’ of Crusius’s philosophical works, thanks to Giorgio
Tonelli’s modern edition. Indeed, the massive circulation of Crusius’s main
philosophical works began in the very first years of Kant’s activity and
exercised a remarkable influence on the formation of his early intellectual
identity. According to Arthur Warda, Kant had a copy of the Anweisung,
vernünftig zu leben (Guidance for Living Rationally) and of the Entwurf
der nothwendigen Vernunft-Wahrheiten (Sketch of the Necessary Truths of
Reason) in his personal library, both in the second edition (published in
 and , respectively), and a copy of Crusius’s work on natural
philosophy, the Anleitung über natürliche Begebenheiten ordentlich und
vorsichtig nachzudencken (Instruction for the Orderly and Careful Consider-
ation of Natural Occurrences), published in Leipzig in . As Tonelli
claims in the preface to his Crusius edition, as well as in his earlier, pioneering
work on the metaphysical and methodological elements of Kant’s pre-
Critical philosophy, the crucial points of Crusius’s influence on Kant can
already be identified in the ontological theses of the New Elucidation of ,
and in the methodological and moral claims of the Inquiry of .
Indeed, from the very beginning Kant seems to recognize Crusius as the
source of his primary objections against Wolffian rationalism: the differ-
ence between mathematical and philosophical method, the criticism of

Warda also mentions a ‘Crusii logica’ from , but since there is no edition of Crusius’s Weg zur
Gewissheit in that year, the entry might concern a work on his logic (Immanuel Kants Bücher, p. ).

See Tonelli, ‘Vorwort’, in Crusius, Die philosophischen Hauptwerke, vol. , pp. li–lii; and Tonelli,
Elementi metodologici e metafisici in Kant, ch. III.

See Tonelli, ‘Der Streit über die mathematische Methode’; Campo, La genesi del criticismo kantiano;
Marquardt, Kant und Crusius; and Kanzian, ‘Kant und Crusius ’.

 Kant and Crusius on the Role of Immortality in Morality
the principle of sufficient reason together with the consequent defense
of free will and denial of ethical intellectualism, the denial of any
pre-established harmony and the defence of a real influx among sub-
stances. It was, in particular, Crusius’s idea of an original sensus communis
(recta ratio) at the basis of every human activity, his defence of the primacy
of the will and emphasis on the moral basis for any philosophical investi-
gation, and his inclination towards eclecticism that grounded his opposition
to Wolff and served to connect him to the so-called Thomasian-Pietistic
milieu. Crusius himself never disguised the polemical target of his philo-
sophical works, namely the supporter of the ‘Leibnizian-Wolffian system’,
for whom ‘it seems that what one believes by means of the sensum commu-
nem is still too stodgy and exoteric, as in the case of the freedom of the will
and of its power on the intellect, of space, of a time before the world, of the
effects of spirits and bodies upon each other, of the capacity spirits have to
be touched and moved, of elements which have shape and size, of the
variability of contingent beings, etc.’ Stepping away from what common
sense suggests and disregarding every reference to experience, Leibniz and
Wolff’s rationalistic system becomes, according to Crusius, entangled in its
own web of principles and definitions, which lead only rarely to the
statements its supporters hope to draw from it and, as in the notorious
case of fatalism, often imply consequences that its supporters are not willing
to admit.
Crusius’s moral philosophy, with its distinctive understanding of virtue
and moral motivation, draws on topics that languished at the hands of the
Leibnizian-Wolffian system and that Crusius accordingly seeks to reinves-
tigate in ‘a proper manner’. Foremost among these topics are the

See Heimsoeth, Metaphysik und Kritik bei Chr. Aug. Crusius; Schmucker, Die Ursprünge der Ethik
Kants; Henrich, ‘Über Kants früheste Ethik’; and Perin, ‘The Proof of the Principle of Sufficient
Reason’.

See Carboncini, ‘Christian August Crusius und die Leibniz-Wolffische Philosophie’; Finster, ‘Zur
Kritik von Christian August Crusius an der Theorie der einfachen Substanzen bei Leibniz und
Wolff’; Krieger, Geist, Welt und Gott bei Christian August Crusius; Watkins, ‘The Development of
Physical Influx in Early Eighteenth-Century Germany’; and Watkins, Kant and the Metaphysik of
Causality, pp. –.

On the ‘Thomasius-Pietistic’ tradition, see Carboncini, ‘Die thomasianisch-pietistische Tradition’,
particularly regarding the connection of the elements of Selbstdenken and Eklektik, the growing
interest in a non-doxastic model of the history of philosophy, the reliability of inner moral
inclination stressed by Christian Thomasius, Johann Franz Buddeus and Joachim Lange, and
Crusius’s own place in this tradition. Cf. also Ciafardone, ‘Über das Primat der praktischen
Vernunft’.

Entwurf [], p. * (when referring to the second edition, I will note the date in square brackets;
otherwise, references to the Entwurf will be to the first edition of ).
 
Ibid., pp. *–*. Ibid., p. *.
Paola Rumore 
immortality of the soul, which is the core of morality, and the existence of
God. Both of these topics are at the very center of Crusius’s rethinking
of Wolff’s rationalistic metaphysics, and both served as fundamental
sources of inspiration for Kant’s own reflections. This chapter will not
claim that Crusius was the immediate source of Kant’s analysis of the
problem of the immortality of the human soul; rather, it defends the idea
that Crusius’s attitude towards that central topic of rationalistic psychology
and the critique he put forth opened a viable path to Kant, an alternative
to the dominant options in the philosophy of the time. Indeed, within the
manifold treatments of this topic offered by eighteenth-century German
philosophy, Crusius’s position in particular presents a variety of elements
that were not compatible with Wolff’s philosophical conception and that
will be reprised in Kant’s doctrine of the postulates of pure practical reason
developed in the second Critique. Notoriously, a postulate of pure practical
reason is, according to Kant, ‘a theoretical proposition, although not one
demonstrable as such [but only] insofar as it is attached inseparably to an
a priori unconditionally valid practical law’ (CPrR :); which is to say,
it is a proposition that reveals a specific inadequacy of speculative reason
and the moral ground for unavoidable assumptions. As I will show,
Crusius similarly emphasizes the ‘inadequacy’ of theoretical proofs pro-
vided by the demonstrative method and adopts the attitude of intellectual
modesty and diffidence towards the claims of reason that likewise animates
Kant’s philosophical activity. Crusius was, in other terms, the representa-
tive of a way of understanding the task of philosophy whom Kant might
have regarded as a model for his own reflections.
The present chapter focuses on the idea that Kant’s investigation of
immortality, and the role he assigns to it within the realm of practical
philosophy, reveals the influence of Crusius – among other critics of
Wolff’s rationalism – upon his mature thought, and this regarding two
points in particular. The first concerns the attitude towards the claims of
reason and its arrogance in metaphysical questions. Since this attitude
arises in a particularly clear way in their respective analyses of the condition
of the soul after the death of the body, I shall begin by offering a schematic
presentation of the standard idea of immortality in the Wolffian tradition
and a survey of its different proofs with reference to its main formulations
around the mid-s. I shall then turn to Crusius’s arguments against the
idea of a rational proof of immortality in order to show that his criticism of

Wood, Kant’s Moral Religion, ch. IV; Guyer, ‘From a Practical Point of View’; Ricken,
‘Die Postulate der reinen praktischen Vernunft’.
 Kant and Crusius on the Role of Immortality in Morality
the traditional metaphysical proof of immortality not only is a topic Kant
continuously takes into account in his investigation of rational psychology,
but also can be considered a key anticipation of Kant’s characterization of
the eternal persistence of the soul as a postulate of pure practical reason.
The second point, by contrast, relates to the place Kant and Crusius assign
to the immortality of the soul in their respective moral philosophies.
As I will stress, the role played by the afterlife in the system of eternal
rewards or punishments that follows from God’s justice in Crusius’s
idea of morality reveals a deep analogy with Kant’s conception of morality
as an expression of the ‘autonomy’ of reason in acting according to
the moral law.
. Against Rationalism: The Criticism of the

Metaphysical Proof
The immortality of the soul – declared a dogma of Christianity by the Fifth
Lateran Council in  – is one of the main topics of eighteenth-century
psychology, alongside the nature and origin of the soul and its commercium
with the body. Already by the first half of the eighteenth century, we find
an extremely varied typology of rational proofs of immortality in German
philosophy, and a detailed description of them would be well beyond the
purpose of this paper. For our aims it is sufficient to bear in mind that
the passage from the old pneumatologia, or science of spirits, to the modern
psychologia, understood as both the empirical and rational science of the soul
with its own method and its own terminology, is one of Wolff’s most
notable innovations in German philosophy and one of his most relevant
accomplishments in the history of Western thought. The interdepend-
ence between experience and reason, the connubium rationis et experientiae
that serves as the motto of Wolff’s philosophy, finds one of its best
realizations in the realm of psychology. Indeed, Wolff’s rational psych-
ology derives a priori from the concept of the soul, the effects that can be
observed a posteriori in the realm of empirical psychology. The origin of
the soul and its fate after the death of the body are topics that for obvious

The complexity of the debate in Germany in the first half of the eighteenth century is described in
the preface to Löscher, Auserlesene Sammlung.

Vidal, The Science of the Soul, pp. –; Rudolph and Goubet (eds.), Die Psychologie Christian
Wolffs; F. Marcolungo (ed.), Christian Wolff tra psicologia empirica e psicologia razionale.

École, ‘Des rapports de l’expérience et de la raison’; Vittadello, ‘Expérience et raison’; Cataldi
Madonna, Christian Wolff und das System des klassischen Rationalismus.

Wolff, Discursus praeliminaris, §§–; Wolff, Psychologia empirica, §n.
Paola Rumore 
reasons can only be treated in the rational doctrine of the soul; this means
that the knowledge we gain of these topics can be derived exclusively a
priori and by means of the deductive reasoning that forms the basis of
Wolff’s scientific method.
Both in Wolff’s earlier formulation in the Deutsche Metaphysik (German
Metaphysics) (–) and in the later, more complex Psychologia
rationalis (), the demonstration of the immortality of the soul rests
on three grounds: the proof of the incorruptibility of spiritual (i.e., simple)
substance, the proof of the capacity to persist in a state of consciousness
(distinct thoughts) even after the connection with the body is lost and the
proof of the preservation of the ‘personality’ of the soul, or the identity of
the same subject through past states of life. Immortality is the combination
of these three features, since none of them on its own amounts to the proof
of the continuation of the soul’s life after the death of the body. Wolff’s
proof soon became a standard solution to the problem of immortality, and
a number of his supporters tried to safeguard it from various attacks and to
improve it in some particular respects. Even philosophers who followed
Wolff’s footsteps in a very autonomous way and offered important revi-
sions of his proof of immortality nonetheless agreed with him on the
mathematical certainty of the a priori (i.e., metaphysical) demonstration.
Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, for instance, integrated Wolff’s proof
with a notable consideration: simplicity and incorruptibility are not by
themselves sufficient reasons for the soul’s immortality, since its finite
nature determines the contingency of its existence: ‘hence the death of
human soul is possible in itself’. The idea that the soul, on account of its
contingent nature, can stop living is supported by the distinction between
two different kinds of immortality, absolute and hypothetical. The body is

Wolff, Discursus praeliminaris, cap. IV; Campo, Cristiano Wolff e il razionalismo precritico,
pp. –.

Baumgarten, Metaphysica, §. For Wolff, incorruptibility represents one of the grounds of
immortality but is not self-sufficient and stands in need of the other two. However, Wolff does
not call into question the certainty of the rational proof of immortality. According to him, souls
cannot die, neither naturaliter nor supernaturaliter. They do not die naturaliter because they are per
essentiam incorruptible, capable of distinct thoughts and aware of their previous condition; they
cannot die supernaturaliter because the nexus rerum in the universe is necessary and unalterable. If
God wants to let human souls die by means of his omnipotence, he should either modify their own
essence or endow them with a capacity which is not grounded in their essence. Both ways are
impossible, since God’s omnipotence is the power to turn what is possible into something real, and
not what is impossible. On Wolff’s doctrine of the immutability of essences, cf. Deutsche
Metaphysik, §§–, and Anmerckungen zur Deutschen Metaphysik (Remarks on the German
Metaphysics), §. For the dangerous implications of the denial of this doctrine, one might
consult his controversy with Budde as presented in Wolff, Nöthige Zugabe, §§–; and
Rumore, Materia cogitans, ch. II.
 Kant and Crusius on the Role of Immortality in Morality
absolutely mortal, since it can die by means of natural laws, whereas the soul
is hypothetically (and not absolutely) immortal; but since it cannot die in
the way a body can die, it has a ‘very great hypothetical immortality’,
which, combined with its maintenance of the capacity of distinct under-
standing and of its personality, provides a reliable demonstration of its
immortality. Other supporters of the rational proof of immortality
managed to integrate Wolff’s demonstration with further metaphysical
items, such as the relation between composite substances and the capacity
of thinking – like Knutzen (Commentatio philosophica de humanae mentis
individua natura, sive Immaterialitate, ) and Mendelssohn (Phaedon
oder über die Unsterblichkeit der Seele [Phaedo, or on the Immortality of
the Soul], ); or the capacity for distinct thoughts even independent of
any contribution of the body – like Johann Gustav Reinbeck (Philoso-
phische Gedancken über die vernünfftige Seele und derselben Unsterblichkeit
[Philosophical Thoughts on the Rational Soul and its Immortality], );
or the universal harmony of beings that would change (or lose perfection)
if one of them should die – like Israel Gottlieb Canz (Uberzeugender
Beweiß aus der Vernunft von der Unsterblichkeit [A Convincing Proof of
Immortality through Reason, ) and Samuel Gotthold Lange’s essay
on G. F. Meier’s initial essay on immortality.
The conviction that we cannot prove the immortality of the soul from
its nature alone (metaphysically, as rational psychology claims to do) does
not always imply the radical denial of immortality. As pointed out in the
chapter by Corey Dyck in this volume, Meier, a permanent reference point
in Kant’s teaching activity, rejects every metaphysical proof of immortality,
together with any attempt to prove it a priori by means of the deductive
method of Wolff’s rational psychology, as the real ground of immortality
lies in God’s unfathomable will. Meier’s investigation of the basis of our
belief in immortality and appreciation of a different degree of certainty in
metaphysical investigations are shared with another unavoidable referent of

Baumgarten, Metaphysica, §: ‘Absolute immortality indeed cannot be attributed to the soul;
however, since what is indestructible cannot die in the innumerable ways in which the body can die,
the soul possesses a very great hypothetical immortality. No substance of this world is annihilated.
Therefore, when the body (such as humans have on this earth) dies, the surviving human soul lives
immortally.’

For Baumgarten’s proof of immortality, cf. Dyck, ‘Beyond the Paralogisms’.

Cf. Rumore, Materia cogitans, pp. –.

Lange, Versuch, des von dem Herrn Georg Friedrich Meyer, . . . in seinen Gedancken von dem Zustande
der Seele nach dem Tode geleugneten mathematischen Erweises der Unsterblichkeit der Seele (). For
further integrations and emendations of Wolff’s idea, see Dyck, Kant and Rational Psychology, ch. .

Cf. Meier, Vertheidigung, §, and Gedancken von dem Zustande, §§ and : ‘The death of the
soul is possible in itself, and the soul is mortal in itself and for itself’; cf. also pp. –.
Paola Rumore 
Kant’s philosophy, Crusius. In addition to the topics mentioned at the
outset of this chapter, namely the fundamental idea of the scope of
philosophy, the attitude towards metaphysics and, most of all, the recon-
sideration of the possibility of providing new solutions to old, inescapable
problems, Crusius’s treatment of the immortality of the soul allows us to
shed light in a very specific way on the influence this distinct philosophical
tradition had on the development of Kant’s thought.
. Crusius’s Moral Proofs and the Role of Immortality

As Wolff already pointed out, and Reinbeck had stressed, immortality
proper pertains only to rational souls and spirits, that is, only to those who
are capable of distinct representations and who possess an awareness of
self-identity (i.e., personality). In the Entwurf, his work on metaphysics,
Crusius recalls this idea, claiming that immortality concerns only rational
spirits, not merely insofar as they are capable of distinct thoughts once
their bodies have died, but also because only rational spirits are endowed
with freedom and therefore capable of moral action. Such creatures are in
fact free to direct their actions according to the laws of God’s perfection,
which laws guarantee that the world is good. God’s will is indeed moral,
in the sense that it conforms to his perfect nature, but it is not determinant
with regard to the human will; thus, virtue consists in the conformity of
human actions with the laws that constitute God’s plan and that express
his perfection. Accordingly, Crusius conceives of happiness, considered as
the reunification with God which rational and freely acting creatures
achieve by means of virtue, as God’s ‘objective final end’ (objektiver
Endzweck).
Crusius’s insistence on the moral nature of rational spirits is a function
of his claim that finite spirits possess a variety of properties which cannot
be understood as effects of the action of physical laws, but which express
moral relations grounded on the nature of God. Even though in Crusius’s
eyes those properties are not necessarily determined by fundamental

In the Entwurf (§§–) Crusius presents immortality as a property of rational spirits; §: ‘The
proofs of immortality we provided can be applied immediately only to spirits who had a real usage
of reason, and who carried out moral actions.’

Ibid., §.

See ibid., §§–. Human beings are God’s final objective ends, because they are able to know the
world and to derive a ‘rational pleasure’ (ein vernünftiger Genuss) from that knowledge. According to
Crusius, the world was created for human beings (Anweisung, §). God’s final formal end is to
create the condition in which human beings are able to realize their virtue (freedom) (§).
Indeed, obedience to God can be considered the form of virtue (§).
 Kant and Crusius on the Role of Immortality in Morality
powers rooted in the physical essence of beings, they nevertheless present
the same degree of necessity, since they are rooted in God’s plan. Immor-
tality is one of these properties: ‘God’s perfection contains a reason why he
preserves his creatures once their life has started and does not ever allow
them to cease completely and forever, so that they do not simply keep on
living, but live in a way that enables them to act morally.’ Given these
premises, Crusius claims that rational spirits share with God the property
of living eternally, albeit on the basis of different ontological grounds: in
the case of God, the reason of immortality lies within his own essence,
whereas in the case of finite beings, it is external to their essence, as it can
only be traced back to God.
Indeed, it is in the context of natural theology that Crusius presents two
a priori proofs of immortality, based respectively on the presence of an
internal striving (Trieb) to an eternal final end in finite creatures and on
the fact that finite creatures are God’s objective final end. The first rests on
the idea that rational spirits are the only ones capable of both conceiving of
and striving towards an eternal final end, whereas irrational beings, like
animals, continuously change their aims. Since God does not do anything
by chance, the presence of an insatiable striving in rational beings fits a
specific divine purpose which implies that God will maintain them in their
living state eternally. The second proof proceeds, briefly, as follows:
rational creatures, as God’s objective final aim, cannot cease to exist, since
otherwise God would fail in his final aim and creation would lose its
purpose, which is of course nonsense. A third demonstration, presented
in the Anweisung, constitutes a distinct predecessor of Kant’s famous use of
the idea of immortality as a postulate of pure practical reason:
God must reward every good action proportionally to its goodness, and
must also punish every bad action proportionally to its degree. Since as
experience shows this never occurs in this life, or does so only rarely, there
must be another life which God designates for the revelation of His
rewarding and punishing justice. Since rewards and punishments must be
unceasing, the other life must be a state of actual immortality.
In any case, rational spirits are immortal only thanks to God’s decision
(Ratschluss), and not due to some ground internal to their nature, and
moral reasons provide the only possible foundation for a valid demonstra-
tion of the immortality of the soul: moral reasons (moralische Gründe) ‘are
   
Ibid., §. Ibid., §. Ibid., §. Ibid.; Anweisung, §.
 
Entwurf, §; Anweisung, §. Ibid., §.
Paola Rumore 
the only ones that fit the proof [of immortality]. It is impossible to derive
immortality from the essence of the soul’.
With this criticism Crusius aims, of course, to deny the validity of every
traditional metaphysical proof of immortality, but moreover and explicitly
to undermine Leibniz and Wolff’s system of pre-established harmony with
its foundational assertion of the complete independence of the soul from
the body. Having released the soul from every connection with matter and
bodies, that is, from the very condition of distinct thoughts (according to
the Leibnizian adage that defines the soul as a vis repraesentativa pro situ
corporis sui), the proponents of the harmony are compelled to admit that
once the body ceases its existence, the soul loses its capacity of rational
thinking and, therefore, its existence as a human soul. Hence the system
of harmony fails to demonstrate immortality and must therefore have
recourse to moral arguments. In this context, Crusius uses the failure of
metaphysically grounded proofs of immortality for a much broader criti-
cism of that system, which turns out to rest on an erroneous idea of God
and spirit and to lead to false conclusions in the form of a fatalism that
involves God’s decisions as well. By contrast, Crusius argues for a system of
real, physical connections among finite beings, whose theoretical justifica-
tion has to be found once again in one of the bedrocks of his natural
theology, namely the distinction between God’s means and aims in the
creation. As matter and rational spirits are God’s means and final ends,
respectively, they must be reciprocally connected in a real, and not merely
an ideal way, as the harmonist would claim. As both spirits and matter
are necessary elements of the divine plan, they must be in a real connec-
tion, which means that they both can really act on each other. Crusius
explains this in terms of a shared property, contending that both spirits
and matter are endowed with the capacity of movement (Bewegungsfähig-
keit), which is a consequence of their finite nature. Indeed, as finite
 
Ibid., §. Entwurf, §.

Ibid., §. Indeed, the harmonist claims that matter is necessary in order to determine the
representative power of the soul, but at the same time maintains the complete autonomy of each
substance whose essence is by definition necessary, immutable and already determined to develop
according to a preconceived plan. Wolff’s notorious claim that the mouth could speak even without
there being a soul guiding its speech constituted a clear admission of the complete independence of
the two ontological realms, so that their relation could only be understood as an ideal connection
(cf. Baumgarten, Metaphysica, §). But in such a case, matter would turn out to be a completely
useless element of creation – a statement that, of course, contradicts the basic assumption that God
never acts in vain. For a detailed analysis of Crusius’s version of physical influx, cf. Watkins, Kant
and the Metaphysics of Causality, pp. –.

Crusius (Entwurf, §) identifies two kinds of matter: passive, leidende Materie, which he calls also
Materia prima sive metaphysica, and active, Materia activa sive physica.
 Kant and Crusius on the Role of Immortality in Morality
substances, they both occupy a finite space (i.e., are impenetrable) and are
therefore able to move from their position when other substances try to
occupy their previous place. According to Crusius, this statement is far
from being a concession to materialists, or to those who aspire to explain
thoughts in terms of movements. Such a hasty conclusion, drawn by,
for instance, Wolff, is nothing but the result of a fallacious inference
(i.e., matter can move; spirits are different from matter; therefore, spirits
cannot move) and of his failure to recognize the fact that the capacity of
movement possessed by spirits can be legitimately derived from their very
essence as finite substances.
Rather than consisting in the capacity of movement they have in
common, then, the ontological difference between spirits and matter
concerns the possession (or lack) of a further power of representation
(Ideenfähigkeit) expressed through thought and will. Crusius identifies
thought, will and movement as ‘the three original experiences of the spirit’,
and their intrinsic difference is grasped by what he, in a Lockean vein,
calls the ‘postulate of sensation’. Yet, as we saw, the ontological gap
between the two ‘highest classes of substances’ cannot by itself provide a
satisfactory demonstration of the immortality of the soul, and reason fails
when it tries to grasp that proof by means of metaphysical arguments.
Similarly to Meier, however, Crusius moves to a kind of mistrust of the
potentialities of mere demonstrative reason, which has to find the source of
its certainty outside of its pure concepts and scientific method; indeed,
neither what Crusius calls ‘subjective reason’ nor ‘reason in abstracto’
manages to yield an indisputable knowledge of immortality. Even so,
the same degree of certainty can be achieved otherwise, since, when reason
fails, the Gewissenstrieb (conscience-drive, or simply conscience) forces us to
believe in the eternal nature of human souls. In this way, Crusius stresses
the legitimacy of the ‘moral proof’ as a new, alternative manner
of demonstrating on a practical basis that which reason fails to deduce
on the basis of its a priori analysis of the concept of the soul.
Significantly, the ‘moral’ nature of this proof of the immortality of the
soul can be understood in a twofold sense. First, as Crusius often stresses,
it is ‘moral’ insofar as it is developed on the basis of moral and not

Ibid., §§ and .

Ibid., §. Where materialists are those who think that thought and will are movements, Crusius
insists explicitly on the idea that thought, will and movements are irreducible to each other, and are
the three fundamental experiences of the spirit (§§–).
   
Cf. ibid., §. Ibid., §. Ibid., §. Ibid., §.

Anweisung, §.
Paola Rumore 
demonstrative grounds; and second, because this kind of proof achieves by
itself a degree of certainty, which Crusius calls moral. According to the
definition provided in his Weg zur Gewissheit (The Path to Certainty)
(), ‘moral certainty’ is ‘the certainty achieved through the knowledge
of probability, in order to differentiate it from the kind of certainty we
achieve in the demonstrative manner’. This seems to be precisely what
happens with our knowledge of immortality, which Crusius explicitly
numbers among the truths we are allowed to accept as certain even though
they do not rely on any rational a priori demonstration. Indeed, our
‘probable proofs (wahrscheinliche Beweise) of the immortality of the soul’
can be considered (morally) certain since they present ‘a very high prob-
ability, which concerns the most important duties’, and because ‘on the
one hand [this probability] does not arise from the accidental circum-
stances of an individual person, and on the other hand God’s providence
ensures that we are not deceiving ourselves about it’. With this state-
ment, Crusius provides a step forward in the gradual advance from a
conception of ‘moral certainty’ as the ‘highest probable knowledge’ –
useful both as a support for our practical life and as a weapon against the
spectre of scepticism – to the distinctively Kantian conception of a ‘moral
commitment’ towards the final ends of human beings.
Crusius’s idea of immortality is firmly grounded in what he understands
to be God’s ‘moral arrangement of the world’ (moralische Einrichtung der
Welt), i.e., the idea that ‘God’s main final end in this life is virtue’. Virtue
itself requires the presence of free will, and, as Crusius claims, ‘since in any
world there must be free actions, God wants them to be necessarily in
accordance with virtue, and they will then be followed by a reward or a
punishment’. The necessity of rational beings acting according to virtue
follows, as we have seen before, as an undeniable consequence from the
rational investigation of God’s moral properties. Indeed, what Crusius
calls ‘God’s moral will of virtue’ (moralisches Wollen der Tugend) is the fact
that God wants rational and free-acting beings to act in conformity with
the essential perfection of his creation.
Precisely because rational beings act freely, God’s will towards their
actions is moral and not determinative. In just this sense, God is the
‘legislator’ of the world, as concerns both the natural and the moral realm;
in fact, in both cases he acts according to his will (determinative or moral),
and the laws he introduces in the creation are the effect of his infinite
   
Weg, §. Ibid., §. Anweisung, §. Ibid., §.
  
Entwurf, §§–. Ibid., §. Ibid.
 Kant and Crusius on the Role of Immortality in Morality
perfection. In the field of morality, God’s perfection can be understood
in an absolute sense, in which God is per essentiam ‘holy’ (heilig), and
therefore he wants the moral good necessarily; or God’s perfection can be
understood in a relative sense, i.e., in relation to the moral actions of
rational spirits. In the latter sense, it expresses itself in terms of ‘rewarding
or punishing justice’. But as Crusius immediately notes, if this justice is
not conceived as something that stretches into the afterlife but realizes
itself solely within the boundaries of this earthly existence, then once this
life is over, every difference between those who were virtuous and those
who were vicious will be cancelled out, and God’s justice would be in
vain. God’s justice, then, considered in terms of providing eternal reward
or punishment, necessarily requires the eternal persistence of the soul, and
accordingly, the idea of God as an indispensable guarantee of justice in the
appraisal of the morality of human action during humans’ earthly lives
becomes one of Crusius’s moral proofs of immortality.
The role Crusius assigns to God’s eternal justice and, as a consequence,
to the immortality of the soul in his moral philosophy reveals an under-
standing of morality which is much more subtle than might initially
appear. Immediately after stressing the never-ending effects of God’s
justice, Crusius provides his readers with the following striking caveat:
Beware of the mistake of considering divine punishments and rewards to be
necessary because it is through them that the law attains to an obligation in
the sense that people would be driven to obedience by the fear of the former
and the hope for the latter, such that fear and hope should be the final ends
of obedience. This would cancel every genuine lawful obligation, and all
actual obedience.
Being a driving motivation of moral actions, the moral certainty of the
immortality of the soul conceived as the hope for eternal reward and fear of
eternal punishments must, of course, be connected to the obedience of the
divine moral law. Yet its role in morality is not essential, but comple-
mentary: hope and fear ‘must prepare the puzzled for obedience; they must
make the idea of the certainty and inviolability of the law lively and
maintain it as such; they must prevent the obedient one from being seduced
by any provocation of evil’. In other words, the idea of immortality as well
as the doctrine of eternal punishments and rewards do not form the core of
morality, but only serve to make our understanding of moral action more
coherent with God’s final ends, which are the very foundation of morality.
    
Anweisung, §. Ibid., §. Ibid., §. Ibid., §. Ibid.
Paola Rumore 
In fact, Crusius emphasizes that ‘the essence of the obligation to the law’
cannot be seen in the fear of or the hope for the eternal effects of God’s
justice, but only in the conformity of human action to the divine law that
moves us to virtue. That is precisely what is suggested by the Gewissens-
trieb, the true criterion of any morality, the detector of the authentic moral
motivation or, as Crusius calls it, the ‘formale of virtue’, which is to say ‘the
intention to obey to God’s will’. The Gewissenstrieb is in fact understood
as a natural striving that allows us to recognize the divine moral law, one of
the ‘natural basic laws of our soul’, from which is derived ‘an inclination to
morality, i.e. to judge the justness or unjustness of our actions’. It reveals
the dependence of rational spirits on God, and leads us to a form of
obedience that cannot be subordinated to anything else except for
God. In this way, Crusius’s insistence on the moral inadequacy of an
action driven by those complementary motivations, and the need to refer
to the formal aspect of our actions, that is, to their conformity to the divine
moral law in order to judge their morality, could not be clearer. Indeed,
Crusius seems to stress the need for the purity of morality insofar as this
admits of no other authority than the divine law as expressed in our
internal conscience, where the dependence upon God is an essential
property of finite spirits (and so consistent with the ‘purity’ of morality).
Kant’s idea of the ‘autonomy’ of the will in moral actions would seem to
require just a small step forward.
. Kant on the Moral Relevance of Immortality

According to Crusius, moral proofs of immortality are the only reliable
ones and enjoy a similar degree, if not the same kind, of certainty and
cogency that the old metaphysical proofs claimed to achieve, even if they
do not gain the same broad approval. As opposed to the traditional proofs,
moral proofs are accepted only with some difficulty, since their validity
cannot be traced back to the principle of non-contradiction (as with
mathematical claims) or confirmed experimentally (as in physics), but
presuppose a deep knowledge of ‘telematology’ (Crusius’s term for the
doctrine of the will), the doctrine of virtue and the fundamentals of
theologia naturalis.
The central role played by this theological element in Crusius’s proof of
immortality is what leads Kant to label it as the ‘theological-moral proof ’.
This expression appears already in the early so-called Metaphysics L from
    
Ibid. Ibid., §. Ibid., §. Ibid., §. Ibid., §.
 Kant and Crusius on the Role of Immortality in Morality
the mid-s, which documents Kant’s attempt to systematically organ-
ize the various paths followed by his predecessors in demonstrating the
soul’s immortality, a demonstration which was presented to his students at
that point as one of the main aims of rational psychology, and which even
in the first Critique would constitute the ‘final aim’ of the transcendental
use of reason. The ‘theological-moral proof’, in which one infers ‘from
the cognition of the divine will . . . to the necessary survival of the soul’,
is there presented as one of the two a priori proofs of immortality, the
other being the so-called transcendental proof, which moves from the
nature and the concept of the soul itself, understood, as in the first Critique
(A/B), as the ‘principle of life’ that animates the body (ML
:–). The transcendental proof – with its baggage of Platonic
images, such as the metaphor of a man pulling a cart to express the relation
between soul and body, or the death of the body described as the liberation
of the soul from the hindrance to a complete life (ML :–) – rests
on a twofold principle: first, that life is the faculty of spontaneity, i.e., of
acting from an inner principle, and second, that matter in itself is inert and
lifeless. The conclusion is that everything that belongs to life must have a
source other than the body: ‘the ground of life must rather lie in another
substance, namely, in the soul’ (ML :). Notoriously, Kant will
abandon this proof on the basis of his transcendental idealism, which calls
into question the idea that material and spiritual phenomena cannot have
the same non-phenomenal substrate (cf. A– and A/B).
The theological-moral proof, too, is a demonstratio a priori, since it
moves from the a priori cognition we have of the absolutely necessary
being, namely God. The proof works as follows. We find in ourselves a
moral law which we comprehend a priori and with which we have to act in
accordance if we want to be moral. Morality thus sets the conditions under
which we become worthy of happiness, but since happiness is not attained
in this world, ‘there must be another world, or a state where the well-being of

‘The greatest yearning of a human being is not to know the actions of the soul, which one cognizes
through experience, but rather its future state. The individual propositions of rational psychology
are not as important here as the general consideration of its origin, of its future state, and of its survival’
(ML :) and A/B. Far from being a marginal topic of Kant’s philosophy (see Ameriks,
Kant’s Theory of Mind, p. ), the proofs of immortality are constantly encountered in his lectures
on metaphysics. For a precise reconstruction, see Dyck, ‘Beyond the Paralogisms’.

‘This is the moral or (because the cognition of God is involved) the theological-moral proof’ (ML
:).

Cf. also R , :.

Cf. Rumore, ‘Meier, Kant e il materialismo psicologico’ and ‘Kant’s Understanding of the
Enlightenment’.
Paola Rumore 
a creature is adequate to its proper conduct’ (ML :). This is where
theology comes to our aid, since the absolutely necessary being is the one
who is able to provide the happiness we have made ourselves worthy of
through our moral action, which is not achievable within the boundaries
of this earthly life. As with Crusius, God is here introduced as the supreme
judge, whose capacity to punish and reward humans ‘proportionally’ to
the morality of their actions is our guarantee of the achievement of
happiness; likewise, the later Metaphysics Mrongovius affirms that this
proof rests on ‘the moral properties of the highest being . . . on God’s
goodness and justice’ (MMr :, my emphasis).
Nevertheless, and differently from Crusius, Kant denies that this
proof and the a posteriori proofs which follow actually demonstrate the
immortality of the soul, ‘but rather prove only the hope for a future life’
(ML :). Indeed, immortality, considered as the ‘natural necessity of
living’ (according to a definition that Kant most likely takes from Baum-
garten’s Metaphysica; cf. §), involves a speculative claim concerning the
nature of the soul and should therefore rest on the contention that the
notion of a ‘mortal soul’ rests on a contradictio in adjecto, and so violates
one of the fundamental principles of logic. Since the theological-moral
proof does not derive its cogency from the rational analysis of the concept
of the soul, but rather from our knowledge of the absolutely necessary
being, it is rational and a priori but does not manage to prove the absolute
necessary immortality of the soul. The Metaphysics L presents a series of
objections to the proof that move precisely in this direction: first of all, one
cannot actually know whether vices and virtues are not already rewarded
and punished in this life, and so whether the whole idea of a future state
would not be superfluous; and second, even assuming the necessity of a
future life for that aim, we have no reason to affirm that, having received
our punishment or reward, we would then need to continue living eter-
nally (ML :–).
In Kant’s critical remarks, we can nonetheless discern the conception of
the soul as a finite and therefore contingent being, which was at the very
basis of Crusius’s refutation of the traditional metaphysical proof, as well as
of Baumgarten’s distinction between the hypothetical and the absolute
necessity of immortality, and the criticisms of the deductive demonstra-
tions of the rationalists. Kant was surely familiar with this notion (through
Baumgarten’s textbook), but he makes use of Baumgarten’s conceptual
pair of absolute and hypothetical necessity, along the lines of Crusius, to
 
Anweisung, §§ and . Cf. Entwurf, §.
 Kant and Crusius on the Role of Immortality in Morality
stress the primacy of practice in this realm; thus, ‘this moral proof is
practically adequate enough for believing in a future state’ and is an
‘adequate ground of belief’ (ML :–). In grounding our hope
and our belief in the afterlife, the proof of immortality serves as an
incentive to morality and virtue, which is actually the main aim of any
metaphysical investigation. A lecture from the early s concludes with
a very clear statement on this score, which recalls the ‘practical conclusion’
of the Dreams of a Spirit-Seer (:, cf. A–/B–) and the idea of
a moral faith:
The main point is always morality: this is the holy and unassailable thing which
we must protect, and this is also the ground and the purpose of all our
speculations and investigations. All metaphysical speculations aim at it. God
and the other world is the only goal of our philosophical investigations, and
if the concepts of God and of the other world did not hang together with
morality, then they would be useless. (ML :)
Indeed, this understanding of immortality as an incentive to morality
comes back as a recurrent topic in Kant’s lectures, gradually taking the form
of the postulate of pure practical reason which will be officially presented in
in the second Critique. Yet some hints in this direction can already be found
in the Metaphysics Mrongovius from the early s, where one reads:
‘Morality would be without incentives if there were no immortality of the
soul. Without belief in immortality, morality would have power only in the
idea, but not in reality. Since morality thus lacks reality, the hope of immor-
tality cannot be separated from it . . . [T]he hope and belief in immortality is a
practical postulate of reason’ (MMr :, emphasis mine). By recognizing
the basis of the moral proof in the laws of morality, ‘which are as it were
geometrically necessary’, and the role played by immortality as a practical
postulate, Kant emphasizes and strengthens the validity of this demonstra-
tion: ‘Although it cannot be counted among the scientific proofs’, it has its
strength, as revealed by the fact that its opponents can be brought ‘ad

As offering only an incentive to virtue and morality, Kant identifies the real limit of the theological-
moral proof, which is no longer identified in the possibility that the soul dies once it has been
punished or rewarded for its actions in this life, or in our ignorance about the real nature of
punishment and rewards, but rather in the fact that the moral proof can be effective only for the
‘honorable man’, i.e., for somebody who has ‘already embraced moral convictions beforehand’. For
him, any proof of immortality is in fact superfluous, whereas despicable human beings would not
only ‘deny the law, but also its author’ (ML :, ).

‘The moral-theological proof is grounded in the moral laws, which are as it were geometrically
necessary’ (MMr :).
Paola Rumore 
absurdum practicum’ (MMr :). At this point, Kant’s previous doubts
concerning the weaknesses of the moral proof seem to have been set aside.
Indeed, being an incentive to virtue and morality is what connects the
theological-moral proof to the a posteriori proofs that Kant investigates in
his lectures, and which he repeatedly presents as proofs of our hope in a
future life. There are two such proofs, both unable to prove the immortal-
ity of the soul qua talis. The first one, the so-called empirical-psychological
proof, is based on the distinction between animal and spiritual life: from
the fact that animal life ceases with the death of the body, one cannot infer
the end of the spiritual life. This proof acts merely negatively, as a support
of our hope of an afterlife insofar as it shows that it is impossible to refute
the belief in an afterlife from an empirical point of view. The second is the
so-called cosmological, teleological or analogical proof, which constitutes
another remarkable point of convergence with Crusius’s discussion.
The proof is initially presented as follows:
in the entirety of nature we find that no powers, no faculty, no instruments
belonging to either inanimate or animate beings which are not aimed
toward a certain use or end. But we find in the soul such powers and
faculties which have no determinate end in this life; thus these faculties
(since nothing in nature is without use or end) . . . still must have a
use somewhere; there must thus be a state where the powers can be used.
(ML :)
Kant’s argument rests on the idea that nothing in nature is without use or
end, and on the consideration that our soul is endowed with faculties and
powers whose use extends beyond this world. These premises echo one of
Crusius’s moral proofs which we have discussed, specifically that which
derived immortality from the capacity God endowed his human creatures
with to conceive and desire eternal final ends. Crusius’s proof had two
fundamental premises: the first concerned our knowledge of God’s ends so
that we could affirm that God does nothing in vain and that human beings
were his objective final end; the second concerned our knowledge of the soul
such that we could affirm that it is endowed (by God) with the capacity we
have just described. The Metaphysics Volckmann from the mid-s offers
very explicit statements on this score; for instance, ‘God would have had no
end with the creation of his creatures, if the rational beings should not have
survived, for these just are the end of creation’ (MVo :).

‘The soul of a human being is armed with powers of cognition and desire, with drives and moral
feeling which have no adequate determination at all in this life’ (ML :).

Entwurf, §.
 Kant and Crusius on the Role of Immortality in Morality
Nevertheless, in the main part of the available lectures, Kant’s version
seems to translate Crusius’s premises into a more ‘secularized’ idiom: so the
idea that God does nothing in vain is replaced by the affirmation of an
immanent teleology in nature, moving from talk of the ‘ends of God’ to talk
of ‘natural ends’, as in the late Metaphysics Dohna (:), and in the
Metaphysics Mrongovius, the analogical (now explicitly called teleological)
proof rests on what is called ‘a necessary postulate of reason . . . also confirmed
by experience’, or the idea that everything has an end, that nothing is in vain
and even that everything is determined to achieve its end. It is then nothing
more than the ‘general law of nature’ from which we infer an analogy of every
natural being with our soul: as every other part of nature is determined to a life
where it can use the members it is provided with, so our soul is determined to
a life where it can fulfil its abilities (MMr :; MDo :). It is hardly
coincidental that in this context the Metaphysics Mrongovius mentions the
fact that even ‘the atheist must assume ends, otherwise he cannot explain the
structure and organization of bodies at all’, a point that underlines Kant’s
attempt to extend the validity of Crusius’s argument beyond the boundaries
of the doctrine of divine ends. While we cannot know God’s ends, as this
exceeds the intellectual capacities of human beings, we do not in fact need to
know them in order to provide a solid basis for our hope for immortality:
‘Immortality is the necessity of a future life from the natural constitution of
the human being (not from an extraordinary decree), thus all human beings
will live in the future because it lies in their nature – they will endure eternally,
for, if it must go beyond this life, then I do not have the least ground – why
this life should end’ (MDo :). The same idea of ‘moral autonomy’ as a

Statements about this principle are found throughout the lectures, e.g., ‘Since nothing in nature is
in vain, but rather everything has its end, these abilities of the soul must also have their determinate
end’ (ML : and passim).

‘The principle in the realm of ends is: that everything has an end and nothing is in vain’ (MMr :),
and ‘we find in nature that everything not only has its end, but rather is also determined to develop
completely and to attain its complete end, because it actually attains it’ (MMr :).

MMr :: ‘The striving after cognition, carried to a certain degree, appears to be even against
our vocation on earth’; ‘All talents are disproportionate in this life’; ‘Who reflects assiduously on the
seat of the soul, or on its immortality does not think in a proportionate enough way [der denkt nicht
proportioniert genug]. Ars longa, vita brevis’ (R , :).

MMr :.

The ends of God ‘we cannot wholly cognize, because he always wants the best – but we do not
cognize that – and no human being can grasp the wisdom of God – the proof from the analogy of
human beings with organized beings of nature is thus for us the most sure. Nothing is in vain – this
is the principle – the ends of organization should be fulfilled in this life or in a future one. Since for
many talents no proportionate use is possible here at all, then it would be against the general law of
nature if they were placed in vain in a human being, if he could not make use of them in a future
life’ (MDo :).
Paola Rumore 
formal obedience to a law that in Kant is no longer ‘divine’, but prescribed
by reason, itself arguably falls into this same attempted ‘secularization’ of
Crusius’s perspective.
The belief in immortality, far from being an intrinsic property drawn
from the pure concept of the soul, is thus rooted in the natural consti-
tution of human beings as an expression of the need of reason to move
beyond the boundaries of the realm of phenomena. Kant’s final statement
on this topic, the acknowledgement of immortality as a postulate of pure
practical reason, has to be seen as the result of his continuing reflection on
the inadequacy of any metaphysical proof suggested by those, like Crusius,
who rejected the Wolffian rational demonstrations as unsatisfactory and
constraining. While Baumgarten exerted an undeniably direct influence on
Kant’s definition of immortality, his distinction between incorruptibility
and immortality, and the importance assigned to the concept of personal-
ity, all of which are commonly highlighted in the identification of Kant’s
sources in this regard, it was Crusius’s broader suggestion that morality
offers the most fertile terrain for seeking a proof of immortality and his
claim of the complementary role of such a ‘belief’ in the realm of morality
that seem to play a much more notable role for Kant. For the mature Kant,
as for the young author of the Dreams, the ‘scale-pan of hope’ maintains its
advantage over the ‘scale-pan of speculation’ (DS :), even if this is
now an advantage that is grounded in the transcendental nature of the
illusions of metaphysics.
 
Kant and Feder on the Will, Happiness

and the Aim of Moral Philosophy
Stefano Bacin
. A Tacit Controversy
The relationship between Kant and Johann Georg Heinrich Feder
(–) is usually taken into consideration with regard to the contro-
versy caused by the Göttingen review of the Critique of Pure Reason, in which,
mainly because of Feder’s editorial changes, Kant’s novel work was dismis-
sively presented as merely another version of Berkeleyan idealism. That was
not a onetime incident, though, but only the most apparent manifestation of
the clash between two profoundly diverging philosophical perspectives. After
Kant’s response to the unfavorable review in the Prolegomena, Feder took the
discussion to the next level. He did not limit himself to publishing a series of
articles and reviews on Kant’s works, but also founded a journal whose main
task was to mount an opposition to the Kantian philosophy that was gaining
in reputation. The Philosophische Bibliothek initiated by Feder, along with his
colleague Christoph Meiners, was meant to be the unified voice of the anti-
Kantian empiricists. Feder hoped to defend what he called “empirical
philosophy” against Kant, that is, a philosophical approach “that is based
exclusively on observations and the accordance [Übereinstimmung] of all, or
most, human experiences . . ., and that in matters of nature refrains entirely
from demonstrations based on concepts.” Feder’s entire career ultimately
depended on his opposition to the Critical philosophy. As he recounts in his
autobiography, he eventually felt that he had to resign from his position at the
University of Göttingen, because the philosophical landscape and the interest
of the students had pronouncedly turned to Kantianism and its new agenda.

On the Göttingen review and the ensuing debate, see Beiser, The Fate of Reason; and Mensch, “Kant
and the Problem of Idealism: On the Significance of the Göttingen Review.”

See Beiser, The Fate of Reason, and, for selected relevant texts, Sassen, Kant’s Early Critics.

Feder, Über Raum und Caussalität zur Prüfung der Kantischen Philosophie, pp. ix–x.

J. G. H. Feder’s Leben, Natur und Grundsätze. Zur Belehrung und Ermunterung seiner lieben
Nachkommen, ed. Karl August Ludwig Feder, pp. f. On this, see Röttgers, “J. G. H. Feder –
Beitrag zu einer Verhinderungsgeschichte eines deutschen Empirismus,” ff. On Feder’s

Stefano Bacin 
Although it has often gone unnoticed, one main focus of the conflict
between Kant’s thought and Feder’s “empirical philosophy” was moral
thought. In the longstanding dispute between critical and empirical phil-
osophy developed after , Kant’s views were carefully considered by
Feder, as is witnessed by his rather accurate, even open-minded remarks in
some reviews of the writings of Kant and minor Kantians like Schmid, and in
an essay on Kant’s moral theology. Kant himself once granted that, unlike
other critics, Feder, “with all his limitations,” was honest (Corr, :f.).
Feder eventually acknowledged that Kant’s views had some impact on him,
especially in theoretical philosophy. Although this does not hold true to the
same extent in moral philosophy, significant traces of a dialogue with Kant’s
account are present in the last two volumes of the Untersuchungen über den
menschlichen Willen (Inquiries on the Human Will). The third volume came
out in , and Feder must have had only a few months to look into the
Groundwork. Nevertheless, the volume includes polemical hints at some of
Kant’s claims. However, the last volume of the Untersuchungen, published in
, in particular, displays numerous marks of Feder’s confrontation with
Kant’s thought. One cause of the delayed publication of the last installment
of the work might well have been Feder’s urgency to accurately deal with
Kant’s philosophy, in both theoretical and moral domains. Most of his
reviews and critical discussions of works by Kant and Kantians were pub-
lished between the last two volumes of the Untersuchungen, so that the
conclusion of this project was intertwined with the appraisal of Kant’s works.
On the other hand, no explicit indication in Kant’s writings highlights the
significance of that antagonism. In fact, Kant never even mentions Feder in
his published work with regard to matters of either theoretical or moral
philosophy. If Feder’s view had any impact on Kant’s thought, it was the
impact of an adversary whose observations prompt one to focus more clearly
on the theses meant to oppose his perspective, which is deemed inadequate.
biography, see the brief profiles of Naschert, “Johann Georg Heinrich Feder (–),” and
Thiel, “Johann Georg Heinrich Feder,” in Klemme and Kuehn (eds.), Dictionary of Eighteenth-
Century German Philosophers.

See mainly Röttgers, “J. G. H. Feder.”

See J. G. H. Feder, review of Kant, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft (); “Über die Kantische
Moraltheologie” (); review of C. C. E. Schmid, Versuch einer Moralphilosophie ().

See Feder, Leben, pp. –, where Feder writes that his Grundsätze der Logik und Metaphysik of
 had been influenced by Kant.

See Vesper, “Zwischen Hume und Kant: Moralbegründung in Feders Untersuchungen über den
menschlichen Willen,” §..

For instance, Pietsch, Topik der Kritik, p. , following Feder himself (Leben, p. ), suggests that
Feder might have had some influence on some of the changes in the second edition of the Critique of
Pure Reason.
 Kant & Feder on Moral Philosophy
At least three reasons suggest that we should look into the moral
dimension of the conflict between the Critical and the empirical philoso-
phy: the importance of Feder’s work on morality, the attack of Feder and
his followers on Kant’s moral thought, and the common background of
Feder’s and Kant’s views on morality. Let me briefly explain these three
points in turn.
First, Feder’s conception of morality is a prominent expression of the
philosophical context in which Kant intervened. Feder, who also published
widely on theoretical philosophy, devoted his main work – and his best, as he
attested – to a highly ambitious, comprehensive account of morality, which
is arguably the most remarkable German work in the area in the late eighteenth
century after Kant’s writings on practical philosophy. After a shorter, success-
ful academic textbook, the Lehrbuch der praktischen Philosophie (Textbook of
Practical Philosophy), Feder published the four-volume Untersuchungen, a
comprehensive account of morality from an empiricist standpoint, roughly
over the same years as Kant’s main writings on moral philosophy. Although
works comparable in dimension and scope had been published in Germany in
the earlier decades, Feder’s Untersuchungen are remarkable, as they followed a
decidedly eclectic approach that embodied very well the latest trends in the
debate. According to Feder himself, the main inspiration for the project of
the Untersuchungen (though not the only one, as we shall see) was Locke’s
Essay, as the general aim was to provide an empirical examination of the power
of the will, analogous to what Locke had done with regard to human
understanding. Thus Feder’s view can be regarded as the most notable,
and most extensively developed, position after the traditional Wolffian doc-
trine, as well as the most important philosophical alternative to Kant’s novel
approach in the German debates of their time. At least some of their contem-
poraries regarded the differences between Kant and Feder as representative of
the matters at issue in the discussion of those decades: In  the Berlinische
Monatsschrift published a piece that aimed at providing a summary of the
current debates in moral philosophy under the title “Feder and Kant,” after
the foremost advocates of the competing views in play.

Feder, Untersuchungen, vol. , p. v.

For overviews of Feder’s thought, see Marino, Praeceptores Germaniae, pp. –, –, and
f.; Albrecht, “Johann Georg Heinrich Feder,” pp. –.

Feder, Lehrbuch der praktischen Philosophie,  vols. Feder revised the textbook while working on the
Untersuchungen and published it as Grundlehren zur Kenntniß des menschlichen Willens und der
natürlichen Gesetze des Rechtsverhaltens (; rd edn. ).
 
Feder, Untersuchungen über den menschlichen Willen (–). Feder, Leben, p. .

Werdermann, “Feder und Kant: Versuch zur Aufhellung einiger streitigen Punkte in den Gründen
der Moralphilosophie,” p. .
Stefano Bacin 
Second, it was Feder’s perspective that presented the first powerful
opposition to Kant’s. In fact, the most engaging early criticisms of Kant’s
moral theory came, if not from Feder directly, from followers of his,
primarily from Gottlob August Tittel, in his Ueber Herrn Kant’s Moralre-
form (On Mr. Kant’s Reform of Morals). It was not that the conflict
initiated by the Göttingen review soon extended to include a dispute in
moral philosophy. In fact, the disagreement concerning moral philosophy
was correspondingly deep and would have probably provoked a contro-
versy in itself, even without the impulse given by the discussion concerning
the first Critique.
Finally, the contrast between Kant’s and Feder’s mature views is an
especially remarkable development in the German philosophical debates
of the late eighteenth century also because, before taking decidedly different
paths, Kant and Feder could be considered rather close as to their philo-
sophical outlook, as is shown also by Feder’s praise for Kant’s Dreams of a
Spirit-Seer, welcomed as the manifestation of dissent against the “academic
tone” in philosophy. It is analogously remarkable that in  Kant chose
a work by Feder as the textbook for his new course on philosophical
encyclopedia. Moreover, in , Feder confessed to Kant, in the same
spirit, in a warm-hearted letter that he had had “a big part” in his resolution
“to do philosophy in the class in the same way as one philosophizes in life
[auf dem Katheder eben so zu philosophiren, wie man im Leben philosophirt]”
(Corr, :). More specifically, Kant and Feder shared significant basic
assumptions regarding how moral philosophy should be treated.
They belonged to a new generation of thinkers who firmly believed in
moving beyond the longstanding controversy between Wolffians and their
adversaries. Already in the s, Feder suggested that “it would finally
be time to stop praising or blaming Wolff one-sidedly,” and Kant would
have agreed that the philosophical agenda should not revolve around the
question of whether one should be a Wolffian or an anti-Wolffian.

Tittel, Ueber Herrn Kant’s Moralreform (). Tittel had already published a philosophical
compendium based on Feder; see Tittel, Erläuterungen der theoretischen und praktischen
Philosophie nach Herrn Feder’s Ordnung,  vols. (–). On Tittel’s polemic against the
Groundwork in general, see Beiser, The Fate of Reason, pp. f.

Feder, review of Kant’s Dream of a Spirit-Seer, p. . Cf. Feder, Über Raum und Causalität, pp. iv–v,
and Leben, p. .

The work was Feder’s Grundriß der Philosophischen Wissenschaften nebst der nöthigen Geschichte, zum
Gebrauch seiner Zuhörer (Outline of the Philosophical Sciences along with the necessary History, for the
Use of his Auditors) (). Cf. Emil Arnoldt, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. V, p. ; and
Zammito, Kant, Herder, and the Birth of Anthropology, pp. ff.

Feder, Lehrbuch, vol. , p. .
 Kant & Feder on Moral Philosophy
Both Kant and Feder held that philosophy required an eclectic attitude,
which should be willing to combine different perspectives in order to
achieve better results. In moral philosophy, the eclectic approach led
them, along with others, to believe that the philosophical framework
provided by the Wolffian conception should be developed by bringing in
crucial insights owed to the newest British debates. Kant repeatedly sug-
gested in the early s that compelling new insights by writers like
Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, and Hume had to be further elaborated.
They had “penetrated furthest in the search for the fundamental principles
of all morality,” but they still needed to “be given . . . precision and
completeness” (Pr, :). That should happen within the framework
of universal practical philosophy, which would thereby be improved, as
it urgently needed to be. In the first part of moral philosophy, the
Wolffian systematic outlook should join forces with the observation of
human nature along the lines of the Scottish moralists, to implement a
“moral physiology” that “explains actual appearances” (MoH, :),
even “a natural doctrine of willing [eine Naturlehre des Wollens]”
(MH, :). Kant was not the only one in Germany to propose such
a combination as a crucial methodological advancement in moral philoso-
phy. Feder advocated a closely similar project no less strongly. If Wolff had
been a model “in the analysis and organization [Ordnung] of given con-
cepts,” he was surpassed in the observation by British writers like Hutch-
eson, Shaftesbury, and Hume. In fact, Feder was the one who ultimately
carried out the project more thoroughly than any other besides Kant.
However, their paths of development diverged. Kant’s and Feder’s
different takes on moral philosophy represent deeply contrasting outcomes
of initially close positions. Kant’s path from the debates in the s to his
mature view can be examined more clearly if we contrast it with the
paradigmatic and influential example of Feder’s moral philosophy, which
was characterized by an altogether different perspective on fundamental
issues. By taking Feder’s view into account, it will become clear that, if
Feder critically followed the development of Kant’s thought, Kant also
addressed Feder’s positions in turn, albeit tacitly. As I shall suggest, some
crucial points made by Kant are arguably aimed at Feder, whose view
must have been, for him, exemplary of a widespread conception that he
radically opposed. Here I shall especially focus on their contrasting views

On the debate on eclecticism in the Aufklärung, see Albrecht, Eklektik.

See Schwaiger, Kategorische und andere Imperativen, pp. ff.; and Bacin, Il senso dell’etica, pp. ff.

Feder, Untersuchungen, vol. , pp. ff.
Stefano Bacin 
on the will and happiness, and then conclude with a look at their concep-
tion of the aim of moral philosophy.
. Against Universal Practical Philosophy

An examination of the conflict between Kant’s and Feder’s views on morality
must begin with their different developments of the shared basic thoughts
that I mentioned in the previous section. The project of a revision of moral
philosophy through a combination of the Wolffian framework with the
observational approach championed by British writers like Hutcheson,
Hume, and Smith might sound odd to modern ears, but was in fact
understood, by both Feder and Kant, as a perfectly reasonable development
of Wolff’s concept of universal practical philosophy. Nothing in Wolff
forbade an empiricist implementation of the project. Feder expressed a
comparatively uncontroversial thought by observing that Wolff’s chief merit
for the advancement of practical philosophy, that is, his original development
of universal practical philosophy, amounted to the “clarification [Aufklärung]
of some concepts and . . . the effort to trace everything back to human
nature.” An improvement of that new discipline would require that the
study of human nature be conducted more thoroughly, drawing on the latest
insights. Since this inquiry should proceed empirically, following the “obser-
vational method,” the combination of Wolff’s concept and the empiricist
approach was not only possible, but quite natural.
Accordingly, Feder’s intentions with the Untersuchungen, if inspired by
Locke, unfold from an unequivocal acknowledgment of Wolff’s great
merit. Feder had claimed already, in the preface to the first edition of
the Lehrbuch, that the universal practical philosophy was the philosophical
discipline to which he would have devoted his main interest in the next
years. When the first volume of the Untersuchungen came out a few years
later, it was presented as the beginning of the fulfillment of that plan.
At the same time, universal practical philosophy represented for Feder the
main ground of disagreement with Kant’s views on morality. In the third
edition of Feder’s Grundlehren (Basic Doctrines) (), Kant’s name was
added to those of the writers who had done significant work on universal
practical philosophy. Feder thereby identified the domain where his
 
Feder, Lehrbuch, vol. , p. ; cf. pp. f. Ibid., preface to the first edition.

Feder, Untersuchungen, vol. , p. . See also Lehrbuch, preface.

The list, representative of Feder’s eclecticism, includes “Cicero, Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Hume,
Home, Smith, Helvetius [sic], Wolf [sic], Garve, Plattner [sic], Kant” (Feder, Grundlehren, rd
edn., p. ).
 Kant & Feder on Moral Philosophy
incompatibility with Kant had its grounds. How to understand and carry
out the project of universal practical philosophy was a fundamental issue.
Wolff’s exposition of universal practical philosophy had a quite broad
scope, reaching from a general account of free action to a treatment of
conscience and the statement of the fundamental law of nature.
Although Wolff’s version dealt with many other topics, for later writers
like Feder and Kant, the core of universal practical philosophy was an
investigation into the power of will. Feder first explained that Wolff’s
innovative propaedeutic to moral philosophy encompassed “a doctrine of
the nature of the human will, the principles of the various kinds of goods
and the essence of happiness, and finally the fundamental doctrine of laws
and right.” Then he equated universal practical philosophy with a theory
of will. The main aim of an improved universal practical philosophy
should be, accordingly, to provide a descriptive examination of human
nature and the human will. Feder once claimed that Hume’s second
Enquiry had had the greatest impact on him. Nevertheless, Feder’s
Untersuchungen provide not so much an investigation of the dynamics of
moral approbation in the wake of the Scottish sentimentalists, but rather
an examination of the various elements of appetition and desire, closer to
Wolff than to Hume.
Like Feder, Kant also understood the theory of the will as the core of
universal practical philosophy. At the same time, though, he rejected the
way that project had been carried out, thereby dismissing an attempt like
Feder’s as well as Wolff’s original elaboration. In fact, a comparison with
Feder allows one to clarify the actual scope of Kant’s dissatisfaction
with universal practical philosophy. When Kant observed in the preface
to the Groundwork that the project he was presenting was not to be
confused with that known under the Wolffian name of universal practical
philosophy (cf. G, :), his target was not merely Wolff. Kant’s criti-
cisms are stated in rather generic terms, but are to be understood as
addressing both Wolff’s original version of universal practical philosophy
(along with the variants of his followers, first and foremost Baumgarten)
and more recent attempts at renewing that project, even in partially

On Wolff’s conception of universal practical philosophy, see Schwaiger, “Christian Wolffs
Philosophia practica universalis.”
 
Feder, Lehrbuch, §, p. . See, e.g., Feder, review of Schmid, p. .

Feder, Untersuchungen, vol. , p. .

Vesper, “Zwischen Hume und Kant,” strongly stresses Feder’s closeness to Hume. While this
happens for good reasons, this emphasis underplays not only the differences between their
perspectives, but also the importance of many other influences on Feder’s views.
Stefano Bacin 
different terms. The “authors of universal practical philosophy”
(G, :) to whom Kant refers in that paragraph also included writers
who were still adhering to that Wolffian project, just like Feder was doing
in the same years with the Untersuchungen. Indeed, Kant’s remarks match
precisely the features of Feder’s work.
In Kant’s objections against universal practical philosophy, at least two
critical remarks are especially relevant: (a) universal practical philosophy
“took into consideration . . . willing generally, with all actions and condi-
tions that belong to it in this general sense” (G, ; cf. MoM, :);
and (b) since universal practical philosophy examines “the actions and
conditions of human willing in general, which are largely drawn from
psychology” (G, :), it can only be an empirical investigation
(cf. MoM, :). Both criticisms apply to Feder as well as to Wolff
and the Wolffians. In fact, Feder’s Untersuchungen provided the closest and
most comprehensive example of the kind of investigation that Kant was
dismissing through these observations. The first volume of that work
presented precisely a descriptive account of willing in general, which
analyzed “the most evident laws” governing the functioning of the will
and devoted a lengthy examination to the various impulses determining
the action of the will. Indeed, Feder devoted his attention to “willing in
general,” of which he aimed to provide the most exhaustive picture.
An important part of Feder’s exposition was, then, a methodological point
against Wolff. While a central aim of the inventor of universal practical
philosophy was to bring mathematical method into moral philosophy, for
Feder, the necessary investigation of the human will in general was to be
carried out through an empirical approach that should essentially draw on
observations of one’s own behavior, character, and passions and those of
others. In this respect, Kant’s criticism against the empirical character
of moral investigation applies to Feder even more precisely than to Wolff.
From Kant’s standpoint, Feder’s empirical inquiry into the human will had

On Kant’s observations against Wolff, see Bacin, “Kant’s Criticisms of Rationalist and Voluntarist
Accounts of the Principle of Morality.” On Baumgarten as addressee of the critical comments
against universal practical philosophy, see Bacin, “Kant’s Lectures on Ethics and Baumgarten’s
Moral Philosophy.” Allison, Kant’s Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals. A Commentary,
pp. –, devotes significant attention to Kant’s criticisms of universal practical philosophy, but
he ultimately follows the German exposition given in Georg Friedrich Meier’s Allgemeine practische
Weltweisheit, without considering either the differences between Wolff’s own treatment and later
expositions or an eclectic version of the project like Feder’s.

Cf., e.g., Feder, Untersuchungen, vol. , p. ; Feder, Lehrbuch, §, pp. –.

See Feder, Untersuchungen, vol. , pp. ff. Anstey and Vanzo, in “Early Modern Experimental
Philosophy,” mention these methodological claims of Feder as an example of application of the
experimental method to moral philosophy.
 Kant & Feder on Moral Philosophy
made the weaknesses of Wolff’s project even clearer. Among these,
Feder’s example showed that an investigation into “willing in general”
could not but be an empirical inquiry, even if Wolff had insisted on
mathematical method.
It is thus more than likely that Kant’s remarks are to be taken to
address Feder’s view as well as the Wolffian variants of universal practical
philosophy. Furthermore, if we assume that Kant could be targeting
Feder as well, this would also explain why he restricted his criticisms to
the theory of the will, which is but one of the many topics covered by
Wolff in his two-volume Philosophia practica universalis. This is because,
as I mentioned before, Feder’s empirical investigation into the human
will, as the most extended development of the Wolffian project, high-
lighted that that was its real core, and that the whole idea of a universal
practical philosophy had its unity in a certain conception of the will.
If they also target Feder, then, Kant’s remarks against universal practical
philosophy must be understood not simply as a conceptual clarification
with regard to the model given by works published half a century earlier,
as Feder’s insistence on further developing Wolff’s idea had made the
concept of universal practical philosophy especially topical in the recent
debate. The project was thereby not just a distinguished proposal in the
recent history of moral philosophy, but an essential point of current,
trend-setting work in the area. Therefore, addressing it in  was
crucial in order to properly clarify the distinctive features of Kant’s
own project of a pure moral philosophy.
The fundamental difference between Kant’s and Feder’s conceptions of
an investigation into the will extends, correspondingly, to how they
understand the will itself. Feder stated, as the most fundamental descrip-
tive law of the will, that “the power of the will [Willenskraft] is dependent
on the power of representation [Vorstellungskraft].” Since the will
“becomes efficient [wirksam] through representations,” its actions depend
on the “intension and quantity of the representations that have an effect
[wirken] on it.” Feder repeatedly stressed the essential dependence of the
will upon representations of the faculty of knowing, also making clear that
“representation” was meant in the broadest sense, including “sensations
and any sort of perceptions [Empfindungen und jedwede Art von
Gewahrnehmungen].”

Feder, Untersuchungen, vol. , p. .

Ibid., vol. , p. fn. Cf. Lehrbuch, §, p. . See the important developments in ibid., vol. ,
pp. f.
Stefano Bacin 
Now, not only is Kant’s view quite contrary to Feder’s, but the very
terms in which he presents it seem to aim at highlighting that oppos-
ition. The constructive part of the second section of the Groundwork
begins with Kant’s explanation of the concept of the will as “the capacity
to act according to the representation of laws” (G, :). Kant thereby
contrasts the will as a rational capacity to the causal powers of “everything
in nature,” which simply follow laws. If we take Feder’s view into
consideration, though, Kant’s main claim on the will in the second section
of the Groundwork appears in a somewhat different light, as a formulation
also suitable for polemical purposes, since it is directed against the very
core of an empiricist account like Feder’s by phrasing the opposite view in
similar terms. By stating that the will is to be understood as following
“the representation of laws,” Kant argues against the thought that the
activity of the will draws on epistemic representations. The contrast with
Feder underscores that when Kant talks of representations, he is actually
referring to the representations of laws. Kant’s main explanation of the
concept of the will in the Groundwork thus could be taken as a response
to, or a reversal of, Feder’s claim of the dependence of the will on
knowledge. In fact, the reviewer of Feder’s Untersuchungen for the Kantian
Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung suggested precisely this, observing that Feder
had not shown that willing necessarily requires representations given by
feelings and sensations, because he did not consider whether the will could
be determined “by the mere idea of lawfulness [Gesetzmäßigkeit].”
From Kant’s standpoint, the failure to consider the pure dimension of
the power of the will in inquiries like Feder’s had inevitably led him
to miss the very source of normative contrasts that moral philosophy is
all about.
. Happiness and Self-Contentment

Kant’s and Feder’s thoroughly opposed conceptions of the will are closely
connected with a further point of disagreement, to which Feder and his
followers called particular attention. In their view, the fundamental mis-
take of Kant’s moral thought did not concern the origin of moral norms or
the source of moral cognition. Unlike Kant, who distinguished between
ancient and modern moral theories because the former regarded the nature
of the highest good as their main concern, while the latter traced moral

Review of J. G. H. Feder, Untersuchungen über den menschlichen Willen, Erster Theil. Zweite
Auflage, p. .
 Kant & Feder on Moral Philosophy
cognition back to different faculties, for Feder, moral epistemology did
not pose such divisive issues. Feder held that philosophical conceptions
of morality differ chiefly with regard to their account of “what is absolutely
good.” The fundamental disagreement, then, only concerns the concep-
tion of value as the object of moral striving.
According to Feder’s empiricist account of the will, actions derive,
with the crucial mediation of representations, from desires and
impulses, which are determined by a natural striving for the good.
For Feder, there is simply no difference between the good and the
useful. He even affirmed that his “main claim [Hauptsatz]” regarding
morality was “all well-being [alles Wohlseyn] is good in and for itself.”
In this respect, his view constitutes an example of the propensity of
several German writers in the late eighteenth century toward proto-
utilitarian positions, arguably in the wake of Leibniz, whose suggestions
could effortlessly be combined with Hutcheson’s and Hume’s views.
The core of Feder’s view is thus a eudaemonist account of morality.
Accordingly, the main reason for opposing Kant’s view was, for Feder
and his followers, to defend eudaemonism. Tittel stated this perspec-
tive in especially pointed terms in the preface to his book against Kant’s
Groundwork: “the cause for which I stand is the cause of happiness as
the principle of morality.”
How to conceive of happiness was therefore a particularly crucial issue,
even more so because Feder’s view is characterized by a marked emphasis
on one specific aspect. Kant had observed in the Groundwork that
“the concept of happiness is so indeterminate a concept that, even
though every human being wishes to achieve it, yet he can never say
determinately and in agreement with himself what he actually wishes and

See, e.g., MoP, :; R , :.

Feder does not follow Hutcheson and Hume in considering the alternative between
sentimentalism and rationalism fundamental. Like most of his German contemporaries, Feder
argues for a combination of traditional rationalism with elements of sentimentalism. On this,
see especially Feder’s “Ueber das moralische Gefühl.” Tittel analogously observes that “moral
feeling cannot be regarded as a principle of morality independently of reason nor of self-love”
(Moralreform, ).
 
Feder, review of Schmid, p. . Ibid., p. .

Feder acknowledged that Leibniz had a great influence on his whole philosophical outlook; see
Leben, p. . On Leibniz’s contribution to the origin of utilitarianism, see Hruschka, “The Greatest
Happiness Principle and Other Early German Anticipations of Utilitarian Theory.”

Note, incidentally, that the word “eudaemonism” was coined precisely to denote Feder’s view. The
term was first used by C. G. Rapp, Ueber die Untauglichkeit des Prinzips der allgemeinen und eigenen
Glückseligkeit zum Grundgesetze der Sittlichkeit (), p. . See Tafani, Virtù e felicità in Kant,
pp.  ff.

Tittel, Moralreform, p. .
Stefano Bacin 
wants” (G, :). By contrast, Feder begins the third volume of the
Untersuchungen with the opposite claim, which reads like a response to
Kant: “One would hardly deem it possible that with regard to something
for which every human being relentlessly strives . . ., the basic concepts
can be changeable and controversial. Yet, this seems to be the case with
happiness. However, it seems more so than how it actually is.” The
distinctive element in Feder’s view is the centrality of the intrinsic
connection between happiness and contentment (Zufriedenheit). Feder
does not merely argue that moral happiness is to be regarded as equally
important as “external” happiness, as many others had already done
before. He argues for a more specific claim, namely that happiness only
has internal grounds. Most of his contemporaries understood happiness
in terms of enduring pleasure. Wolff had defined happiness as “the
condition of continuous pleasure [Freude],” and later writers followed
him in this respect. This is the background for the clarification in
Kant’s first Critique, where happiness is understood as “the satisfaction of
all of our inclinations (extensive, with regard to their manifoldness, as well
as intensive, with regard to degree, and also protensive, with regard to
duration)” (A/B; cf., e.g., MM, :). By contrast, Feder
stressed the inner, moral nature of happiness by defining it
as consisting in “the pleasure, contentment and duration [Vergnügen,
Zufriedenheit und Dauer] of those states of mind.” Thus, Feder main-
tained that “the most important goods and evils on which the happiness
of human beings depends for the most part, are those that one preserves
in oneself and most has in one’s power.” Since its basic elements
“rest chiefly on inner grounds,” happiness necessarily requires self-
knowledge. More specifically, a vital condition for happiness is a “good
conscience,” without which, for Feder, it is but “a dream that can expire
or be altered by any external impact [Anstoß].” Conversely, “nothing is
as much a cause of the discontentment and misery [Unzufriedenheit und
Unglückseligkeit] of human beings as their moral imperfection,” as
“experience and the testimony of wise men of all times” teach.

Feder, Untersuchungen, vol. , p. . See also Feder’s comment on Kant’s statement in his review of
Kant’s Groundwork in the Göttingische Anzeigen von gelehrten Sachen, October , , p. .

Wolff, Deutsche Ethik (German Ethics), §.

See, for instance, Eberhard, Sittenlehre der Vernunft (), §: “By happiness everyone
understands a condition in which he enjoys true pleasure continuously.”

Feder, Untersuchungen, vol. , p. . Cf. Feder, Abhandlung über die allgemeinsten Grundsätze der
praktischen Philosophie zum dritten Theil der Untersuchungen über den menschlichen Willen (),
p. xxxv.
   
Feder, Untersuchungen, vol. , p. . Ibid., p. . Ibid., p. . Ibid., p. .
 Kant & Feder on Moral Philosophy
Consequently, on Feder’s view, a virtuous man cannot be unhappy (see,
for instance, Lehrbuch, p. , §).
Kant’s insistence on rejecting the idea of “moral happiness” (MM, :)
was probably also motivated by its prominence in Feder’s moral philoso-
phy. The close connection between happiness and self-contentment was
not a new thesis, to be sure. Kant had discussed it in his lectures with regard
to Stoicism and Epicureanism. In eighteenth-century Germany, Wolff
and Baumgarten, for instance, had also pointed out that self-contentment
belonged to happiness. Neither of them, though, had been so decisive as
Feder in essentially equating the two notions. More importantly, Feder
presented that equation as one central claim of his eudaemonism. Kant thus
had good reason to devote particular attention to the issue. Feder was not
only a prominent moral philosopher, but also the leading figure in the most
vigorous group of opponents of Kant’s moral thought who were targeting
Kant’s account of morality primarily because of its anti-eudaemonism.
Rejecting the view that revolved around the thought that happiness essen-
tially consisted in the agent’s inner contentment with his or her behavior
was therefore of strategic importance for Kant. Dismissing its very concep-
tion of happiness was an essential move against the most pugnacious variant
of eudaemonism.
Already in the Groundwork, Kant had observed that “the more a
cultivated reason engages with the purpose of enjoying life and with
happiness, so much the further does a human being stray from true
contentment” (G, :), thus arguing for a view opposite to Feder’s.
However, Kant explicitly criticizes in his published writings a conception
of happiness characterized by the primacy of self-contentment only
after . He had already expressed his position on the matter before.
Still, one might suggest that Feder’s insistence helped Kant to see that this
point needed to be addressed more specifically. In fact, he regarded it as
one central claim of “the eudaemonist” (MM, :). Now, Kant
observes, the contentment provided by “good conscience” is especially
comforting in disgrace, to be sure. Still, “[t]his consolation is not happi-
ness, not even the smallest part of it”; it is “inner tranquility” that is in fact
“merely negative with respect to everything that can make life pleasant”
(CPrR, :). Kant had already clarified before the second Critique what
the main difference consists in: self-contentment is not happiness, because

See, e.g., MoM, :ff.

See Wolff, Psychologia empirica, §; Baumgarten, Ethica philosophica, rd edn. (), §.

Tittel rejected Kant’s view in turn; see Moralreform, pp. f.
Stefano Bacin 
“[n]o matter how much inner self-contentment a human being may have,
he will still always feel his external condition – the deity is independent
of all external circumstances, but a human being is not” (MoM,
:). This makes self-contentment merely “an analogue of happi-
ness” (CPrR, :). In this way, Kant fully reversed the very picture of
happiness painted by Feder and Tittel, and by means of the same words
they used. The importance of Kant’s position in this respect was quite
clear to his contemporaries, who saw in it his response to eudaemonism.
Feder himself highlighted precisely this point as one main distinctive
feature of Kant’s view regarding the principle of morality. What sets Kant’s
account apart from others, according to Feder, is that he “does not reckon
self-contentment and self-respect to happiness.”
Notably, Kant’s main argument against a view like Feder’s focuses on
moral phenomenology. An intrinsic connection between happiness and
self-contentment must ultimately be rejected, as it offers an inadequate
description of a distinctive feature of the standpoint of a human agent. If,
following Feder, we do not recognize any tension between the demands of
duty and the natural desire to be happy, we are not in the position to
account for the fact – one that belongs to the experience of everyone as a
moral subject – that obligations clash with at least some natural inclin-
ations on which they set boundaries. It is necessary to explain that
the striving for happiness constitutes “a powerful counterweight to
all the commands of duty” (G, :). If this aspect of moral experience
is not taken into account, it is impossible to justify the satisfaction that
complying with obligations should entail. A view like Feder’s implies that
“one cannot feel such satisfaction or mental unease prior to cognition of
obligation and cannot make it the basis of the latter” (CPrR, :; my
emphasis). Kant accordingly calls the thought of “moral happiness” a
“sophistry [Vernünftelei]” (MM, :), since it tacitly diverges from
the common experience of the actual feelings involved in those circum-
stances. This descriptive inadequacy entails a contradictory conception,
according to which happiness would rely on the virtuous disposition,

I thank Jens Timmermann for making his revised text and translation of MoM available to me
ahead of its publication.

Compare, for instance, Tittel, Erläuterungen, vol. , p. : “Here we find consolation and
tranquillity in disgrace [Unglück]. In the hardest circumstances that we or our loved ones
experience the consciousness of rightful and virtuous dispositions comforts us.”

See Rapp, Über die Untauglichkeit, p. .

Feder, review of the Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, p. .

Here I have changed the Cambridge Edition translation, which renders the pejorative Vernünftelei
with the too-mild ambiguous phrase “subtle reasoning.”
 Kant & Feder on Moral Philosophy
which would, in turn, depend on how much the action contributes to the
happiness of the agent (cf. CPrR, :; MM, :f.).
. “Only a new formula”: Moral Philosophy

and the Virtuous Life
The conflicting perspectives on the project of a universal practical philoso-
phy and the opposite views of happiness yielded, finally, one further
divergence. At the beginning of the third volume of the Untersuchungen,
published in , Feder maintained that philosophers kept on question-
ing, “with sophisms and prejudices,” basic moral truths long acknowledged
by all reasonable men, such as that happiness and virtue are intrinsically
connected. Only a few months earlier, Kant’s Groundwork had forcefully
argued against that view (cf. G, :f.). Feder repeatedly raised the
suspicion that the dispute occasioned by Kant’s moral thought was of a
merely verbal nature, since he believed that the “misunderstandings on the
part of the Critical philosophy” were primarily caused by “the alteration
of the concepts of happiness, inclination, agreeable, prudence, etc.”
Was then Kant’s moral thought a product of misguided philosophical
hubris that pretended to rectify the most deeply rooted convictions of
human beings? This was, in fact, the point raised by Tittel, who talked of
Kant’s reform of morals to stress that the main claims in the Groundwork
amounted to urging a deep change not only in the common understanding
of all basic ideas of morality, but also in the practice of virtue itself, in a
way that would have been in contrast with human nature. The criticism
is particularly serious, because Kant himself had insisted that his view
amounted to an unfolding of “common moral cognition,” as the very title
of the first section of the Groundwork indicates.
This is the background for a critical remark that Kant famously touches
upon in the preface to the second Critique. According to a rival commen-
tator, the Groundwork had provided not a new moral principle, but “only a
new formula” (CPrR, :). In light of the broader controversy between
Kant and Feder on morality, I suggest that that remark went back not just
to Tittel, as is commonly acknowledged, but to Feder as well. That
observation, in fact, entailed more than what Kant seems to address in
the preface to the second Critique. Kant limited himself to responding that
there can be nothing but new formulas of the same fundamental principle

Feder, Untersuchungen, vol. , pp. viii ff.

Feder, review of Schmid, p. . Cf. Feder, review of the Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, pp. –.
Stefano Bacin 
of morality, since “the world” is neither “ignorant of what duty is” nor
“in thoroughgoing error about it” (cf. CPrR, :fn.). But Tittel had, in
fact, made a slightly different point. The most serious weakness of Kant’s
view was not that he had not succeeded in identifying a new principle.
Like Feder, Tittel held that “the world” did not need anything of that sort.
On the contrary, the main issue was that Kant’s “new formula” was bound
to be an “empty formula.” The categorical imperative was nothing but an
artificially devised normative expression that had no footing in human
nature. Feder had already pointed out in his review of the Groundwork
that Kant’s view would find the greatest difficulties “in the application.”
Missing a natural ground, Kant’s principle could not have any motiv-
ational power, which is only determined by desires and impulses.
In Tittel’s words, Kant’s moral philosophy could not have any “instructive
force [belehrende Kraft] and impact on the heart.”
This original version of the traditional emptiness objection revealed a
significant difference of views concerning the nature and aims of moral
philosophy in general. Tittel followed Feder’s assumption that morality
did not need a new principle, but only a careful explanation of its natural
grounds: “empirical philosophy” gives an account “based on observation”
that supports a “morals that follows natural feeling.” The search for a
fundamental principle is less important, and can even be detrimental to
morality: “Nothing is more dangerous for the understanding than a
general principle established [festgesetzt] too soon.” Feder’s main criticism
of Wolff’s universal practical philosophy was, in fact, that the love of
simplicity had led him to draw on too small a number of explicative
principles. For Feder, Kant’s view was a case in point. His attempt
was thus doubly wrong from the empiricist’s perspective. Kant had missed
the essential link with human nature and had focused instead on the search
for a fundamental principle. Therefore, Feder held that Kant had dispar-
aged “empirical philosophy” in the Groundwork even more so than in the
Critique of Pure Reason.

See Tittel, Moralreform, p. .

Feder, review of the Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, p. .
 
Tittel, Moralreform, p. ; cf. p. . Feder, Untersuchungen, vol. , p. fn.

Ibid., vol. , ; cf. pp. ff., and Abhandlung, p. xi. Note that the Festsetzung of the moral
principle belonged to the main task of the Groundwork (G, :).

Feder, Untersuchungen, vol. , p. .

Feder was closer to the common sense philosophers in this respect. See Kuehn, Scottish Common
Sense in Germany, pp. ff.

Feder, Raum, pp. x and xii. Cf. review of the Grundlegung, pp. f; Feder, Untersuchungen, vol. ,
p. fn.
 Kant & Feder on Moral Philosophy
In Feder’s view, a philosophical account of morality should not aim at
providing a new moral principle or a list of obligations, but observations
that can rectify the misleading accounts of moral truths. Notably, Feder
did not devote as much attention to the doctrine of moral duties. He
did briefly treat it in the two versions of his textbook (the Lehrbuch
and the Grundlehren), but his main work in moral philosophy only
concentrated on reshaping universal practical philosophy. At the same
time, though, his take on the Wolffian project gave it a more Thomasian
twist, as the empirical knowledge of the faculty of desire provided the
tools for controlling passions and strengthening the favorable natural
affects and impulses. Accordingly, Feder presented the Untersuchungen as
including the “basic rules of knowing and governing human minds [die
Grundregeln, die menschlichen Gemüther zu erkennen und zu regieren],” as
the title of the first volume goes. Thus, with regard to content, Feder’s
Untersuchungen are often closer to Kant’s anthropology than to his moral
philosophy. Nevertheless, Feder did intend to provide a treatment of
morality, which, unlike Kant’s anthropology, led to an extended investi-
gation of happiness and virtue, and to a critical appraisal of moral
theories against the evidence provided by observation. The deeper
difference with Kant thus concerns the very conception of the role of
moral philosophy for a virtuous life.
In this light, the critical remark that Kant would have merely presented
a new formula is more significant than it might seem. It was not just the
point of an obscure critic, but another manifestation of a broader
conflict between empirical philosophy and the Critical philosophy
regarding the conception of moral philosophy itself. Both Kant and Feder
held that the “healthy reason” has all the resources needed for a virtuous
life (cf., e.g., G, :). They diverged on the implications of this assump-
tion for the role of philosophy. Feder thought that the improved Wolffian
project could rectify the dangerous errors of philosophers referring to an
accurate examination of the elements of human nature. Contrary to
Feder, Kant held that there is a tension within human nature: the enemy
of morality is not primarily an incorrect account, but the deeply rooted
tendencies in the agents that result in a dialectic that, while dangerous, is
nevertheless natural. Because of this, “common human reason is impelled
to leave its sphere not by some need of speculation . . ., but rather on
practical grounds” (G, :). Philosophy therefore needs to identify a
 
Thus Brandt, “Feder und Kant,” p. . See Röttgers, “J. G. H. Feder,” pp. f.

See, e.g., Feder, Untersuchungen, vol. , p. vi.
Stefano Bacin 
principle in the practical use of reason, which can counter the inclinations
opposing the demands of morality. While Feder argued for a naturalistic
development of universal practical philosophy that did not aim at any
real foundation, Kant insisted on the necessity of a proper justification of
moral demands. He granted that while no new principle was needed, a
formula was.
When we consider the longstanding, and mostly implicit, conflict
between Kant and Feder in moral philosophy, a genuine clash of philo-
sophical paradigms becomes apparent. In Feder, we find an extended
empirical investigation into the will and an eudaemonist account centered
on a strongly moralized view of happiness, joined with a common-sense
conception of the aim of the philosophical analysis of morality. In reaction
to the same assumptions from which Feder started, Kant powerfully
opposed all three points, shifting the debate in new directions. The
confrontation with Feder’s view highlights some of the features that more
strongly singled out Kant’s moral philosophy in its context: the project of a
pure moral philosophy as a new orientation in the analysis of the will, the
anti-eudaemonism characterized by the contrast between happiness and
self-contentment, and the general thought that moral philosophy should
contribute to virtue neither by changing the common understanding of
morality, nor by registering alleged natural grounds of virtue, but by
strengthening its basic principles.

Kant’s and Feder’s ways of developing the practical part of morality diverged accordingly. Note that
Feder had presented a philosophical ascetics (cf. Lehrbuch, p. ) before Kant (cf. MM, :f.).
Feder cannot be regarded as the only possible source of Kant’s usage, however since the word,
originally from the theological vocabulary, may have come to Kant’s attention from many other
writers. See Bacin, Il senso dell’etica, pp. f.
 
The Antithetic between Freedom and Natural

Necessity: Garve’s Problem and Kant’s Solution
Heiner F. Klemme
. Introduction
Kant was very close with Christian Garve. Although the two philosophers
never met face-to-face, they liked each other very much on a personal level.
In terms of practical philosophy, they shared some basic philosophical
convictions. Both of them believed in the reality of moral distinctions and
were of the opinion that literally every human being has insight into the
difference between virtue and vice. Both of them were philosophers trained
in the tradition of German school metaphysics – Kant at Königsberg and
Garve mainly at Halle and Leipzig. They learned to speak the same
language of philosophy, to discuss the same problems, and to use the same
methods, but there were decisive differences between them as well, which
serve to elucidate the philosophical situation in the s and s.
Many philosophers at that time felt the need to overcome the bounds of
pure Wolffianism, but they tried to do so in very different ways: whereas
Garve mistrusted the concept of reason and argued for the importance of
feelings and emotions, Kant took the opposite stance. Upon considering
the Wolffian diagnosis of the contemporary moral situation, Kant came to
the conclusion that they just prescribed the wrong medicine, that is, they
prescribed one adulterated with empirical ingredients. If, therefore,
we free our moral concepts from these, then we will have the chance both
to lay out the basic principles of an unconditional good will and to bring
ourselves to act in accordance with them.

On Garve’s life and work, see Wunderlich, “Garve, Christian (–).”

One exception seems to be Moses Mendelssohn, who claimed in  to be the last true Wolffian.
“I know that my philosophy is not the philosophy of the times. Mine still has all too much the smell
of that school in which I educated myself and that in the first half of the century wanted to
dominate, perhaps all too high-handedly. Despotism of every sort invites resistance” (Morning Hours.
Lectures on God’s Existence, trans. Dahlstrom and Dyck, p. xx).

Heiner F. Klemme 
It does not come as a surprise that Kant was not pleased with Garve’s
Philosophische Anmerkungen und Abhandlungen zu Cicero’s Büchern von den
Pflichten (Philosophical Remarks and Essays on Cicero’s Books concerning
Duties), originally published in three books in . This is not because
of Cicero. Cicero’s De officiis, which Garve translated in  as well
(Cicero, Abhandlung über die menschlichen Pflichten [On Duties]), was
still very influential in the eighteenth century. It lay behind almost all
of German moral philosophy in that century and had the status of an
all-time classic work. King Frederick II of Prussia, who had asked Garve to
translate De officiis into German, even claimed in  that it was the best
book “which has ever been written about morality, and which will ever be
written.” Garve and Kant admired Cicero, but they were also ambitious
to overcome Cicero for the better. The differences between Garve and
Kant become very clear if we recall some of Garve’s convictions as
expressed in his Philosophische Anmerkungen. Garve believed that all laws
and duties are grounded on our nature, that our obligations rest on
feelings and reflection, that there are “gradations” between our feelings,
that the belief in God “fixes” our virtue, and that we never know for sure
if we have done our duty. The sum of all of our duties lies, according to
Garve, in the principle to act as best we can according to our abilities. If we
were looking for a principle of morality that could stand in opposition
to the basic idea of Kant’s categorical imperative, Garve’s “act according to
your capability [nach Vermögen thun]” would be a natural choice. Because
of its more subjective and individualistic stance, it seems to be weaker than
the principle “perfice te! ” (“perfect yourself!”) put forward by Alexander
Gottlieb Baumgarten. No wonder that Kant intended to write a book
against Garve named “Anticritique” or “Prodromo,” which, in the end,
led to the Groundwork. Not that the Groundwork is a sentence-by-sentence
refutation of Garve’s book, or of any principle of morality put forward in

Frederick II, Ueber die deutsche Litteratur, p. .

Cf. Garve, Anmerkungen und Abhandlungen, I p. , II p. , and III p. .
 
Garve, Anmerkungen und Abhandlungen, III p. . Ibid., II p. .

Cf. Ibid., III pp. –.

“Nach Vermögen thun, ist wirklich die Summe aller Pflichten, so wie der Grund aller Beruhigung”
(Ibid., III p. ).

“PERFICE TE, Ergo perfice te in statu naturali, QUANTUM POTES” (Baumgarten, Ethica
philosophica, §; cf. Johann August Eberhard, Sittenlehre der Vernunft: “Wir können daher die
ganze natürliche Verbindlichkeit des Menschen in den Satz zusammenfassen: suche durch deine
freyen Handlungen dich vollkommener zu machen, und zwar aufs möglichste, das ist, so viel es dir
schlechterdings, natürlich und moralisch möglich ist,” p. ).

This is what Hamann reported to Herder and to Johann Georg Scheffner in February and April
; see Kraft/Schönecker, “Einleitung,” in Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, pp. ix–Ixi.
 Antithetic between Freedom and Natural Necessity
the history of philosophy: it is a direct attack on all previous attempts
to clarify the supreme principle of morality. It stands on its own feet by
showing, first, that the categorical imperative is the only principle of
morality and, second, how this principle is possible. King Frederick II
turned out to be wrong: there would be a better book on morality.
Kant never mentions Garve in the Groundwork, but he discusses Garve’s
moral philosophy extensively in his On the Common Saying: That May
be correct in Theory, but It is of No Use in Practice (). However, there
is good reason to believe that Garve is present in the Groundwork in a
somewhat more specific way. This becomes clear if we pay attention to the
fifth subsection (“On the extreme boundary of all practical philosophy”)
of the third section (Transition from Metaphysics of Morals to the
Critique of Pure Practical Reason) of the Groundwork, in which Kant
refers to the complicated relation between freedom and natural necessity.
In the secondary literature on both Garve and Kant, it seems to have been
overlooked that Garve presents, as early as , an antithesis between
freedom and natural necessity that comes close to the problem of the
Third Antinomy in the Critique of Pure Reason. Kant refers to the Third
Antinomy and its resolution as the clue to understanding what freedom in
a practical sense is all about in the fifth subsection of Groundwork III.
Garve’s own philosophical conception of this antithesis helps us to under-
stand the particularities of Kant’s program for the deduction of the idea of
freedom and the categorical imperative in . Although Garve com-
ments on the relation between morality, freedom, and natural necessity in
his Philosophische Anmerkungen in  (Kant later refers to these passages,
as we will see), the most striking passages are to be found in his
comments on Adam Ferguson’s Institutes of Moral Philosophy ()
(Garve, “Anmerkungen des Übersetzers” [“Translator’s Remarks”]).
In what follows, I will begin by presenting Garve’s argument and its
importance for understanding Kant’s project of a deduction of the idea
of freedom, and then I will comment on its relation with Kant’s On the
Common Saying.

Kant mentions a letter from Johann Georg Sulzer (cf. G, :fn) in which he asked Kant many
years previous how we can explain the fact that moral concepts hardly motivate people to act
morally. Kant will recall this topic in his critique of Garve in . On Sulzer’s impact on Kant, see
Klemme, “Johann Georg Sulzers ‘vermischte Sittenlehre.’”

In the following I make use of passages previously published in H. F. Klemme, “Freiheit oder
Fatalismus?” and I gratefully acknowledge the publisher of the original text, De Gruyter, for
permission to make use of this text in English translation.
Heiner F. Klemme 
. Garve on the Antithetic between Freedom and Necessity

Many years before Kant tried to resolve the Third Antinomy between
freedom and natural necessity in the Critique of Pure Reason, Garve
discussed the complicated relationship between freedom and necessity in
his comments on Ferguson. Yet in the rich literature on the historical and
philosophical sources of the Third Antinomy, this text has not been
recognized at all. Before Garve’s comments on the relationship, he talks
about ethics and its relation to freedom. He starts with this confession:
“I do not know how I am free, but I know how I ought to be perfect.”
That moral distinctions presuppose freedom is one of the basic convictions
of almost all German philosophers of that day, but they differ about the
question of what kind of freedom is involved here. However, Garve seems
to be quite singular in arguing that we do not know how freedom might be
possible. Christian Wolff, for instance, does not have this reservation.
To Wolff, freedom just means being able to do what we want to do
according to our knowledge of the good and the bad. Garve, instead,
openly confesses that he does not possess a theory that would make it
comprehensible to us how freedom and necessity could be made compat-
ible with each other. Garve outlines the fundamental problem of the
compatibility of freedom and necessity in the following passage:
This is precisely the difficulty. The one sensation says to me: I act according
to representations; and my virtue consists precisely in the fact that I will be
driven to cause the good through the representation of it. Human nature
knows of no other origin of the desires, and the nature of virtue allows no
other. For, a good, i.e., a beneficial action, if it does not happen just from
the motives of this benefit, is no longer virtue.
Another sensation tells me: I am myself the originator of my actions; and
I am only virtuous insofar as I am the originator of the good that I do. But
I am only an originator if my actions depend on nothing outside of me, and
therefore not on my own representations as well, for in the end these
themselves depend upon things outside of me.
How should one react philosophically to this problem? Garve believes
that we can find three different solutions. The fatalist believes in the truth
of the first position, the indifferentist believes the second one to be true,
and some philosophers are convinced that both positions are true at the
same time:

Garve, “Anmerkungen des Uebersetzers,” in Adam Ferguson, Grundsätze der Moralphilosophie, .
 
Wolff, Deutsche Ethik, §. Garve, Anmerkungen des Uebersetzers, p. .
 Antithetic between Freedom and Natural Necessity
In order to remedy these difficulties a group of philosophers accepted
merely the first sensation including its theory, and rejected the other
sensation as an illusion; these are the true fatalists. Another group, among
whom are men who have always been astute and upright, have merely held
onto the second sensation, and they either did not consider the first or
thought it to be deceptive. This is the position that freedom of indifference
accepts. A third group admitted both sensations (and who would want to
deny them that has attended to himself?) and tried to unify their theory.
But how is this possible? If our actions are supposed to be entirely inde-
pendent, then they must also be independent of our representations, for in
the end these are dependent as well. – If our actions are supposed to be
good; then they must happen for a reason; then they must depend on ideas,
which contain these reasons in themselves.
Garve confesses to be helpless. He does not have an answer to the decisive
question: How is it possible to unite the positions of natural necessity and
freedom? That there must be a solution is without doubt, just because
virtue is real. Garve does not hesitate to state that our belief in virtue comes
before all systems. If we do not find a convincing system of concepts to
explain our belief in the existence of virtue, then, we should give up
the system rather than suspend our belief in the existence of virtue:
“We all believe in the existence of virtue. This belief is prior to all systems.
It [i.e., the belief] first brought them forth: we invented them in order to
justify it; the intensity of the dispute itself originated out of the zeal
regarding precisely that matter on which everybody agrees.” The ques-
tion then is: What does the theory look like that adequately expresses our
conviction in the reality of morality and causes the fatalist to fall silent?
Garve does not answer this question. He is dogmatic when it comes to the
existence of virtue and morality, and he shares the conviction of all
Wolffians that obligation and virtue imply freedom. Without freedom,
virtue would be an illusion, but just because freedom is real, that is,
because we feel its existence, virtue cannot be an illusion. It is a good
thing to have a theory of virtue, but if we do not find one, it should not
affect our moral practice. In fact, Garve is a skeptic with regard to any
“big theory” – as a popular philosopher, he mistrusts all kinds of ambitious
philosophical speculations. So, while he declares himself unable to solve
the riddle, he does not take that to mean that we should become skeptical
with regard to our moral convictions. Instead, we should become
 
Ibid., pp. –. Ibid., pp. –.
Heiner F. Klemme 
skeptical with regard to our rational concepts. Morality is more a matter
of feeling than of reasoning.
. Kant on Freedom and Necessity in Groundwork III

How does Kant react to Garve’s problem in the Groundwork? Without
freedom, there would be no categorical imperative. But how can we be
sure of its objective reality? Does Kant try to deduce the objective reality of
the idea of freedom through the use of our speculative faculty of reasoning,
as some readers of Kant think? Or does he offer some other kind of
argument in favor of freedom?
It seems natural to start our discussion with subsection four of Ground-
work III, in which Kant tries to answer the question “How is a categorical
imperative possible?” At one point in his argument, Kant states: “And so
categorical imperatives are possible by this: that the idea of freedom makes
me a member of an intelligible world and consequently, if I were only this,
all my actions would always be in conformity with the autonomy of the
will; but since at the same time I intuit myself as a member of the world of
sense, they ought to be in conformity with it (G, :).” Obligation is all
about the relation in which I, as an intelligence, stand to myself as being a
part of the sensible world. On the one side, I regard myself as free, and on
the other side, I know myself to act under the laws of nature. How, then, is
the concept of freedom to be understood? Why does it matter to us at all?
To get his concept of the categorical imperative off the ground, Kant needs
to have an argument as to how freedom of the will is possible at all. Unlike
most interpretations of Groundwork III, I would like to answer this
question from the perspective of its fifth subsection. This is for two
reasons: the first is that in this subsection, Kant discusses the relation
between freedom and necessity quite intensively. In doing so, the reader
gets a very good impression of what kind of argument Kant believed
himself to have given in the preceding subsections. The second reason is
Garve. What we might call his position of skeptical ignorance will show up
in subsection five, as will the position of the fatalists he mentioned in 
(and repeated in ).
Now on to subsection five of Groundwork III. The line of thought here
can be understood as a critical resolution of tensions that are immanent in
the theoretical and practical use of pure reason. Because, according to
Kant’s point of view, characteristic features of our reason always find their
expression in concrete, philosophical positions, this subsection is directed
against two philosophical positions that are naturally bound up with our
 Antithetic between Freedom and Natural Necessity
reason. The first position is that of the epistemological skeptic, a position
for which Garve stands. As we have already seen, Garve is convinced, on
the one hand, that we are free-acting subjects, and, on the other hand, that
we are subjected to the laws of the natural, mechanical, deterministic
world. But Garve does not find himself in a position to formulate a theory
by means of which freedom and necessity can be unified with each other.
The second position is that of the fatalist. In , before Kant finished his
work on the Groundwork in September , he published a review of a
book written by a notorious fatalist, Johann Heinrich Schulz. Schulz’s
Versuch einer Anleitung zur Sittenlehre für alle Menschen, ohne Unterschied
der Religionen (Attempt at a Guide to the Doctrine of Morality for all People,
irrespective of Religions) seems to be the object of Kant’s critique of
fatalism.
According to Kant, the fatalist claims to be able to prove the impossi-
bility of the concept of freedom, and to be able to show it to be an illusion.
This is what Schulz claims in his Versuch:
If it is true, namely, that all my perceptions and representations originate
from impressions that are made on my external and inner senses, then from
this consistently follows that I, along with all of my perceptions, representa-
tions, thoughts, and judgments, am subjected to the most strict and
unavoidable laws of necessity, that I am innocent of the abundance and of
the poverty of my perceptions and of my distinct representations themselves
in the strongest sense . . . In all of this I have no free power of choice, no
freedom, no authority, which can oppose the natural laws that command me
with unbounded necessity.
It is important to see that, according to Kant’s conception, a narrow
argumentative connection exists between the position of the epistemo-
logical skeptic and that of the fatalist. Kant is convinced that “the fatalist”
is the beneficiary of Garve’s hesitantly skeptical view about a comprehen-
sive theory of freedom and necessity: “it is not left to the philosopher’s
discretion whether he wants to remove the seeming conflict or leave it
untouched; for in the latter case the theory about this would be bonum
vacans [i.e., something that belongs to no one], into possession of which
the fatalist could justifiably enter and chase all morality from its supposed
possession, as occupying it without title” (G, :).
Whoever wants to understand the deduction program in the Ground-
work must therefore take into account that Kant in no way sees himself,
 
For more details, see H. F. Klemme, “‘als ob er frei wäre.’” Schulz, Versuch, pp. –.
Heiner F. Klemme 
with his deduction of the idea of freedom and of the categorical imperative,
as relieved of the problem of giving an answer to the position of the fatalist.
What could Kant say in reply to the fatalist who objects that freedom is an
illusion? In principle, there are two alternatives open for Kant.
First, he could point to the fact that the fatalist acknowledges the reality
of moral obligation. Whoever acknowledges that there exist uncondition-
ally commanding moral obligations cannot deny the idea of freedom,
which is a necessary precondition of these obligations. In fact, there are
signs in Kant’s philosophy before and after  that point in this direc-
tion of argumentation, such as when, in the Critique of Pure Reason, he
speaks of how our consciousness of moral imperatives implies the idea of
freedom, or in the Schulz review of , and of course in the Critique of
Practical Reason, published at the end of , with its doctrine of the fact
of reason. Even in Groundwork III, Kant occasionally points in this
direction, such as when he refers in subsection four to the “practical use
of common human reason” (G, :) as the authority confirming the
deduction of the categorical imperative.
Second, Kant could refer to our immediate consciousness of a
spontaneity and self-activity, which justifies the use of the idea of freedom
in a practical respect. Kant argues exactly in this way in the central passages
that carry the argument of the third subsection of Groundwork III (“Of the
interest attaching to the ideas of morality”). The strategy of conceiving of
freedom as an implication of our consciousness of practical reason none-
theless has a particular flaw: the force of this argument is weaker than a
proof for the objective reality of natural causality put forth by theoretical
philosophy. Should theoretical philosophy be able to prove the idea of
freedom as a concept standing in contradiction with natural causality, then
it must be given up as a chimerical conception. In the case of a contradic-
tion between a proof from the pure practical and the speculative use of
reason, the latter always wins out, according to Kant.
Kant, therefore, needs to provide a deduction of the idea of freedom,
carried out by pure practical reason, that does not stand in contradiction

CPR A–/B–, cf. A/B.

If the idea of freedom would be impossible in terms of pure speculative reason, then even the moral
law could not provide its objective practical meaning. “The kind of credential of the moral law –
that it is itself laid down as a principle of the deduction of freedom as a causality of pure reason – is
fully sufficient in place of any a priori justification, since theoretical reason was forced to assume at
least the possibility of freedom in order to fill a need of its own” (CPrR, :). If there were no idea
of freedom, then the moral law could not give any credential to it. If the fatalist could prove the
impossibility of freedom, our consciousness of the moral law would be an illusion.
 Antithetic between Freedom and Natural Necessity
with speculative reason. His strategy consists in shifting the burden of
proof upon his opponent. The fatalist must prove that freedom is impos-
sible from a theoretical point of view. Because he does not do so, it
becomes clear why there is no theoretical deduction of the idea of freedom
to be found in the Groundwork. If there were such an argument, Kant
would claim to have directly refuted the position of the fatalist. But he
never does claim that. His argument against fatalism rests on the doctrine
of transcendental idealism as established in the first Critique. With tran-
scendental idealism, it is methodologically ruled out that one can formally
prove the objective reality of an idea of reason; but equally ruled out is any
attempt at a theoretical proof of the impossibility of the idea of freedom.
It has been shown so far that the positive deduction of the idea of
freedom does not start with theoretical philosophy and its concept of
freedom, as is continually claimed in the literature. The task of theoret-
ical philosophy in the Groundwork, rather, consists in showing the impos-
sibility of proving freedom’s impossibility in its practical use. Kant’s talk of
the “outermost bounds of all practical philosophy” in subsection five has a
double meaning. On the one hand, the deduction of the idea of freedom
has no transcendental status, as our freedom can indeed be thought, but
not strictly proven. On the other hand, practical philosophy must not be
afraid of being damaged by assaults on its concept of freedom from the
standpoint of theoretical philosophy. On the contrary, it is incumbent
upon theoretical philosophy to secure the boundaries. Pure practical reason
“demands” “of speculative reason that it put an end to the discord in which
it entangles itself in theoretical questions so that practical reason may have
tranquility and security from the external attacks that could make the land
on which it wants to build a matter of dispute” (G, :–). Kant’s
defense of the idea of freedom in the fifth subsection is, in principle,
limited to a reference to the solution of the Third Antinomy in the
Critique of Pure Reason. This may be one of the reasons why its importance
to the proof structure of the Groundwork is so often overlooked, but also
why the purpose of the text’s argument is judged incorrectly.
Let us now take a closer look at some aspects of subsection five. Kant
begins with the claim that all humans think of themselves “as free as far as
their will is concerned.” How does Kant know this? In order to justify this,
he refers to the – as we might call it – fact of our practice of judgment:

See, for instance, Henrich, “Die Deduktion des Sittengesetzes.”

One notable exception is Puls in “Freiheit als Unabhängigkeit von bloß subjektiv bestimmenden
Ursachen.”
Heiner F. Klemme 
“All human beings think of themselves as free as far as their will is
concerned. From this [Daher] stem all judgments about actions as being
such that they ought to have been done even though they were not done”
(G, :). The “from this” is not to be understood temporally, but rather
logically, in the sense of “for this reason.” While in subsection three Kant
approaches the relation in which the thought of freedom stands to the
ought from the side of the consciousness of this freedom as spontaneity, he
begins subsection five with a reference to judgments in which we express
an ought. Because we express judgments that give voice to an ought, we
have to think of ourselves as free as far as our will is concerned: the concept
of the ought implies the concept of the freedom of the will. Although
freedom is therefore “only an idea of reason, whose objective reality is in
itself doubtful,” it is not nothing. Its reality is guaranteed from a practical
point of view via judgments that we make, as rational beings endowed with
a will, regarding actions that have indeed taken place but should not have
taken place. To think of ourselves as free and to be conscious of having
ought to have acted differently (the consciousness of obligation) are two
aspects of one and the same thing.
If the practical reality of the idea of freedom is secured through the
consciousness of our spontaneity as rational beings, how can we still
meaningfully call it into question? Doubt is, as we all know, a child of
our expectations. We expect that we can explain why something exists or
not. Explanations are, according to Kant, statements in which causal
claims are asserted. An event is explained precisely when its first ground
is named. It is therefore not enough for us to experience what is the case.
We also want to know why something is or how something can be the
case. Indeed, this expectation is disappointed in the case of the idea of
freedom. We can ascertain that all humans view themselves as free as far as
their will is concerned. We can also ascertain that we make normative
judgments, whose ground of validity is the idea of freedom. We can
ascertain all of this. But we cannot explain why or how pure reason can
be practical, that is, “how freedom is possible” (G, :). This is because we
can have no intuition of this freedom. Because the rational concept or idea
of freedom is not an object of experience and thus how it is practical
cannot be explained, the objective reality of freedom must remain in doubt
from a theoretical point of view. How transcendental freedom is possible
cannot be known. The objective reality of freedom must remain doubtful
on the basis of the bounds of our cognitive abilities; the sword of fatalism
hangs over our consciousness of freedom. If a theoretical proof of the idea
of freedom’s impossibility were to be successful, the sword would fall and
 Antithetic between Freedom and Natural Necessity
the idea of freedom would reveal itself to be a lifeless chimera. Kant must
therefore show that the sword only exists in the blind eyes of the fatalist,
whose attacks must be deflected in such a way that the fatalist himself
comes to see the hopelessness of his undertaking.
If we look at Kant’s strategy of argumentation in subsection five, it
seems to fit with an important distinction to be found in the deduction
literature of that time, but not recognized in the modern literature
on Kant. In addition to direct and positive deductions, there are also
indirect and negative deductions, such as the “deductio ad impossibile”
and the “deductio ad absurdum,” which, according to an entry in Zedler’s
Universal-Lexicon, are also called “demonstrationes indirectae seu
negatiuae.” If we apply this distinction between a negative and a positive
deduction, then, for the argument in the Groundwork, this means that if
we were to look in it for a direct or positive deduction in the sense of our
theoretical use of reason, we would not come upon the objective reality of
the idea of freedom. From a theoretical or speculative perspective, the idea
of freedom cannot show any hint of being deduced as the ground of the
possibility of an unconditional moral obligation. On the contrary, Kant
attempts (as already mentioned) to defend the practical claim that, on the
basis of their consciousness of their practical self-activity, rational beings
are the originators of their actions. We are not therefore justified in making
this claim from a practical point of view, because we possess an infallible
consciousness of our spontaneity and self-activity as acting beings that
cannot be called into doubt by reasons drawn from theoretical philosophy.
Rather, we can only make this claim because, beyond this consciousness,
“it is just as impossible for the most subtle philosophy as for the most
common human reason to argue freedom away” (G, :). This is
precisely what Kant claims to have proven: Although we cannot prove
the objective reality of the idea of freedom, it can indeed be shown
that “nature at least does not conflict with causality through freedom”
(A/B). The idea of freedom is, from a transcendental-logical point
of view, a possible concept.
Besides the negative, there is also a positive deduction of the idea of
freedom. But it is not a theoretical deduction, it is merely a practical one.
This becomes clear from Kant’s use of the word “claim.” He uses it in one
single passage of Groundwork III, and then only as a part of the term
“rightful claim [Rechtsanspruch].” This passage is to be found in subsection

Johann Heinrich Zedler, Grosses vollständiges Universal-Lexicon, Art. “Demonstration,” vol. VII,
col. .
Heiner F. Klemme 
five: “But the rightful claim [Rechtsanspruch] to freedom of will made even
by common human reason is based on the consciousness and the granted
presupposition of the independence of reason from merely subjectively
determining causes, all of which together constitute what belongs only to
feeling and hence come under the general name of sensibility” (G, :).
Kant understands this claim as an entitlement (“Anmaßung”): “So it is that
the human being is entitled to a will which lets nothing be put to his
account that belongs merely to his desires and inclinations” (G, :).
We attribute to ourselves only those actions that are not exclusively a part
of our natural existence. In light of this situation, the task of the philoso-
pher consists in checking the conceptual and philosophical structure and
the assumptions of this rightful claim raised by common human reason, to
state its conceptual and philosophical presuppositions, and to protect it
from criticism. Practical philosophy can achieve nothing more. In particu-
lar, it cannot provide a deduction by means of which, as Kant puts it in the
Concluding Remark of the Groundwork, the categorical imperative can be
made “comprehensible as regards its absolute necessity” (G, :).
At this juncture, one should not neglect to point out that, as far as its
content is concerned, Kant makes use of the concept of a negative deduc-
tion already in the Critique of Pure Reason. In the section on the Discipline
of Pure Reason with regard to Hypotheses, he makes a clear distinction
between the speculative and practical uses of our concepts of reason:
The concepts of reason are, as we have said, mere ideas, and of course have
no object in any sort of experience, but also do not on that account
designate objects that are invented and at the same time thereby assumed
to be possible. They are merely thought problematically, in order to ground
regulative principles of the systematic use of the understanding in the field
of experience in relation to them (as heuristic fictions). If one departs from
this, they are mere thought-entities, the possibility of which is not demon-
strable, and which thus cannot be used to ground the explanation of actual
appearances through a hypothesis. (A/B)
This statement applies to the idea of the soul, but also to the idea of
freedom (compare A/B). With an explicit gesture toward the
Canon chapter to follow, Kant makes a decisive reference:
It will be shown in what follows, however, that in regards to its practical use
reason still has the right to assume something which it would in no way be
warranted in presupposing in the field of mere speculation without suffi-
cient grounds of proof; for all such presuppositions injure the perfection of
speculation, about which, however, the practical interest does not trouble
itself at all. There it thus has a possession the legitimacy of which need not
 Antithetic between Freedom and Natural Necessity
be proved, and the proof of which it could not in fact give. The opponent
should therefore prove. But since he no more knows something about the
object that is doubted which would establish its non-being than does
the former, who asserts its actuality, here an advantage on the side of
he who asserts something as a practically necessary presupposition (melior
est conditio possidentis) is revealed. He is, namely, free to use, as it were in an
emergency, the very same means for his good cause as his opponent would
use against it, i.e., to use the hypotheses that do not serve to strengthen the
proof of it but serve only to show that the opponent understands far too
little about the object of the dispute to be able to flatter himself with an
advantage in speculate insight over us. Hypotheses are therefore allowed in
the field of pure reason only as weapons of war, not for grounding a right
but only for defending it. However, we must always seek the enemy here in
ourselves. (A–/B–)
Here, “in dubio melior est conditio possidentis” refers to the principle in law
that, in a dispute over the true owner of a thing, the actual possessor
should be given the advantage. If we act under the idea of freedom, we are
justified in doing so, as long as its impossibility is not proven to us.
Because transcendental idealism boils down to the thesis of the impossi-
bility of the proof of freedom’s impossibility, we can be certain that every
critique of the idea of freedom from a practical point of view accomplishes
nothing. This is precisely the strategy that Kant uses in the text from 
as well.
. Kant on Garve in 

Although Kant does not name Garve in Groundwork III at all, Garve is the
person behind the fourth and fifth subsections. In his On the Common
Saying from , Kant argues explicitly against Garve and his skeptical
position about freedom and necessity. He agrees with Garve that the
existence or objective reality of freedom can never be proven by means of
theoretical philosophy. (And by “existence” he means what he calls the
“objective reality” of freedom in the Groundwork.) On this point, Garve
simply repeats, in his  Philosophische Anmerkungen, what he had
already pointed out in his comments on Ferguson in . As Kant sees
it, however, Garve had neglected to seek shelter in a concept of freedom,
through which, “at the very least,” the possibility of the categorical impera-
tive could be “saved.” Kant’s statement of  reads as a belated
commentary to subsections four and five of his Groundwork:

For more details, see Klemme, “La pratique de la moralité.”
Heiner F. Klemme 
Professor Garve makes (in his remarks on Cicero’s book On Duties, pg. .
 edition) a noteworthy confession worthy of his astuteness: “Freedom,
according to his innermost conviction, will forever remain insoluble and
never be explained.” A proof of its reality simply cannot be met with in
either an immediate or a mediate experience; and without any proof one
can indeed not accept it. Since a proof of it cannot be given on merely
theoretical grounds (for this would have to be sought in experience), and
must therefore be derived from practical principles of reason only, but not
from technical-practical ones (for they would again require grounds of
experience), and can consequently be derived only from morally-practical
[grounds]: in this one has to wonder why Herr G. did not turn to the
concept of freedom in order to at least save the possibility of such
imperatives. (OCS, :fn)
. Conclusion
Kant does not claim in the Groundwork to have deduced the idea of
freedom from a theoretical point of view. And just as little can his critique
of the deduction of the idea of freedom by means of speculative philosophy
in the Critique of Practical Reason be conceived of as a self-criticism of his
 position. The ground of the obligation of the moral law is pure
reason itself. It gives us the law of freedom: “it is not because the law
interests us that it has validity for us (for that is heteronomy and depend-
ence of practical reason on sensibility, namely on a feeling lying at its basis,
in which case reason can never be morally lawgiving), rather . . . it interests
[us], because it is valid for us human beings, since it originated from our
will as intelligence, and consequently from our real self” (G, :–).
Why is our will as intelligence (pure will) our “real” or “proper self”? It is
because we can only have a “will of our own” on the basis of it. This thesis
can (according to Kant’s meaning) only be negated at the cost of practical
self-contradiction: if a person negates the condition on which one can have
one’s own will, one cannot conceive of oneself as the author of one’s
actions.
It is remarkable that, in the sixth and last subsection of Groundwork III,
Kant makes reference to the inconceivability of the “practical, uncondi-
tioned necessity of the moral imperative,” but at the same time stresses that
this inconceivability does not cancel the unconditional obligation of this
imperative. Epistemological skepticism toward the idea of freedom would
only have a negative effect on the validity of the categorical imperative if

CPrR, :.
 Antithetic between Freedom and Natural Necessity
we were to have no reason to conceive of ourselves as subjects who
determine themselves to act under the idea of freedom. That we do, in
fact, act under this idea Kant understands as an entitlement that pure
reason itself gives to us as willing subjects. Whoever thinks of him- or
herself as free does not claim to possess theoretical cognition of his or her
freedom. But such a person does not merely formulate just any old
arbitrary, contradiction-free (and therefore trivial) thought. On the con-
trary, this thought is grounded on the consciousness of a spontaneity of
reason that is perceived to be immediately determining of the will.
The idea of freedom has its meaning in an act of self-determination.
Its meaning reveals itself in its completion.
As we have seen, Kant did not intend to give a theoretical proof of the
possibility of the idea of freedom and of the categorical imperative. What is
more, he does not ground the categorical imperative on knowledge of
value. The categorical imperative does not obligate us because we cognize a
value in the noumenal world, but rather because we practically behave in a
particular way toward ourselves. The ground of unconditional obligation is
pure reason in the act of its lawgiving for a will that can determine itself
to action. Our “real self” consists in this form of practical self-relation.

I would like to thank Michael Walshots for translating sections II–V of this paper.
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Corey W. Dyck, Falk Wunderlich - Kant and His German Contemporaries. Vol 1, Logic, Mind, Epistemology, Science and Ethics. 1

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Corey W. Dyck, Falk Wunderlich - Kant and His German Contemporaries. Vol 1, Logic, Mind, Epistemology, Science and Ethics. 1

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Introduction

Corey W. Dyck and Falk Wunderlich

Wolﬀ’s Empirical Psychology and the Structure

. Two Conceptions of Purity in Kant and Wolﬀ

. Kant’s Taxonomy of Logics and the Wolﬃan Tradition

. General Logic (Pure and Applied) and Transcendental Logic

From Logical Calculus to Logical Formality:

Figure . The relation between two concepts in a categorical judgment

Figure .a. Every B is A.

Figure .c. Some A is B.

Figure .d. Some A is not B.

Figure .a. All C is B, all A is C; therefore, all A is B. Or: All A is C; all C is B;

Figure .b. All C is B; some A is C; therefore, some A is B.

. Euler’s Circles and the Project of Logical Calculus

Figure . Some learned men are misers.

Figure . No miser is virtuous.

done in the ﬁelds of metaphysics, semiotics, and natural language to reach

The ﬁnal step is to determine, by the aforementioned principles of

Figure .a. Figure .b.

This use of circles ﬁts with Ploucquet’s deﬁnition of “calculus in the

This introduction of circles is premised on three claims (besides the

. Kant’s Circle Notation: From Logical Calculus

Figure . Relation between two concepts in a judgment.

Kant and Tetens on the Unity of the Self

. Tetens on Inner Sense, Consciousness and Selbstgefühl

. Tetens on Apperception and the Consciousness of Objects

. Tetens on the Unity of the Self and Selbstgefühl

. Tetens on the Unity of the Self as Appearance and as Substance

. Tetens’s Conceptions of Unity and Kant

G. F. Meier and Kant on the Belief

It is widely acknowledged that Georg Friedrich Meier (–) exercised

. Meier’s Critique of Demonstrative Proofs

. Meier on the Moral Certainty of Immortality

. Meier and Kant on Belief

Maimon and Kant on the Nature of the Mind

The history of philosophy from  onward is in many ways simply

. Sensibility and Understanding in Kant

. Maimon and the Cognizing Mind

. Kant’s Response to Maimon

Lambert and Kant on Truth

Philosophy without history of philosophy,

. Lambert on Logical and Metaphysical Truth

. Kant’s Impossibility Argument

. Ten Comments on Kant’s Account of Truth

Mendelssohn, Kant and the Refutation of Idealism

. Mendelssohn’s Modest Epistemology

. Kant’s Transcendental Idealism and Transcendental

Platner on Kant: From Scepticism to

Ernst Platner (–) is among those eighteenth-century German

Der wohltemperierte Mensch. Aufklärungsanthropologien im Widerstreit; Falk Wunderlich, ‘Eine

. The  Aphorismen: Kant as a Humean Sceptic

. Platner on Kant and Materialism in the Neue Anthropologie

. The  Aphorismen: Kant as a Dogmatic, and Platner as

.. Dogmatic Critique

.. Sceptical Critique

.. Sceptical critique and rational psychology

Lambert and Kant on Cognition ( Erkenntnis)

. Lambert on Experience and Historical

. Points of Similarity and Diﬀerence between

. Cognition in general

. A priori cognition

. A priori cognition and science

Kant and the Skull Collectors:

It is well known that in the Critique of the Power of Judgment, Kant